Dark Matter Content in Three Galactic Globular Clusters - 47 Tuc, NGC 1851, and M 15

  • Lee, Joowon (School of Space Research, Kyung Hee University) ;
  • Kim, SungsooS. (School of Space Research, Kyung Hee University) ;
  • Shin, Jihye (Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Peking University)
  • Published : 2015.04.10

Abstract

Globular clusters (GCs) are known to have a very small amount of or no dark matter (DM). Several studies propose that GCs may have formed in individual dark halos. Thus, some of the current GCs might have a non-negligible DM content. Using the Fokker-Planck (FP) calculations, we investigate the dynamical evolution of the Galactic GCs residing in mini DM halo. We trace the initial amount of DM of 47 Tuc, NGC 1851, and M15, which is a 'disk/bulge' cluster, an 'old halo' cluster, and a 'young halo' cluster, respectively. We find that the three GCs have initially insignificant amounts of DM, less than 20 percent of the initial stellar mass of the each cluster.

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