Dark matter-baryon segregation in the nonlinear evolution of coupled dark energy models

Abstract

The growth and virialization of spherical top-hat fluctuations, in coupled dark energy models, causes segregation between dark matter (DM) and baryons, as the gravitational infall into the potential well proceeds more slowly for the baryons than for DM. As a consequence, after attaining their turnaround and before full virialization, halos have outer layers rich of baryons. Accordingly, a natural ambiguity exists on the definition of the virial density contrast. In fact, when the outer baryon layers infall onto the DM-richer core, they carry with them DM materials outside the original fluctuation; hence, no time exists when all materials originally belonging to the fluctuation--and only they--have virialized. Baryon-DM segregation can have various astrophysical consequences on different length scales. The smallest halos may loose up to 50% of the original baryonic contents and become hardly visible. Subhalos in cluster-size halos may loose much baryonic materials, which could then be observed as intracluster light. Isolated halos, in general, can be expected to have a baryon component richer than the cosmological proportions, due to the cosmic enrichement of baryons lost in small halo encounters.