Gravothermal Solutions of SIDM Halos: Mapping from Constant to Velocity-dependent Cross Section

Abstract

The scale-free gravothermal fluid formalism has long proved effective in describing the evolution of self-interacting dark matter halos with a constant dark matter particle cross section. However, whether the gravothermal fluid solutions match numerical simulations for velocity-dependent cross-section scenarios remains untested. In this work, we provide a fast mapping method that relates the constant-cross-section gravothermal solution to models with arbitrary velocity dependence in the cross section. We show that the gravothermal solutions after mapping are in good agreement with Arepo N-body simulation results. We illustrate the power of this approach by applying this fast mapping method to a halo hosting a low-surface-brightness galaxy, UGC 128. We show that this fast mapping method can be used to constrain free parameters in a physically motivated cross-section model and illustrate the parameter space favored by the rotation curve measurement.