Wed, January 25, 2017
1:00 pm - 2:00 pm
PRB Price Place
Recent work has shown that density profiles in the outskirts of dark matter halos can become extremely steep over a narrow range of radius, deviating from well-known fitting functions like the Navarro-Frenk-White(NFW) profile. This behavior is produced by splashback material on its first apocentric passage after accretion. The location of this splashback feature may be understood quite simply, from first principles. I will discuss how this feature may be used as a probe of fundamental physical phenomena like dynamical friction and also of exotic physics. I will also review the progress in the detection of this feature in observations of galaxy clusters.