Remarkable JWST trick lets us “see” dark matter

Dark matter remains one of nature’s greatest mysteries.

Our galaxy is embedded in an enormous, diffuse dark matter halo, indicating that there must be dark matter flowing through the solar system. While dark matter exists in a large, diffuse halo, the normal matter, because it experiences electromagnetic and collisional interactions, clumps and clusters together in the centers of these gravitational potential wells. The interplay between dark matter and normal matter is essential for understanding the mass distribution within individual galaxies.

Astrophysically, dark matter’s gravity accounts for multiple disparate observations.

A spiral galaxy like the Milky Way rotates as shown at right, not at left, indicating the presence of dark matter. Not only all galaxies, but clusters of galaxies and even the large-scale cosmic web all require dark matter to be cold and gravitating from very early times in the Universe. Modified gravity theories, although they cannot explain many of these phenomena very well, do an outstanding job at detailing the dynamics of spiral galaxies.

From individual, rotating galaxies

According to models and simulations, all galaxies should be embedded in dark matter haloes, whose densities peak at the galactic centers. On long enough timescales, of perhaps a billion years, a single dark matter particle from the outskirts of the halo will complete one orbit. Within each dark matter halo, a series of substructures will exist, with the number, size, and distribution of the various substructures dependent on the type and temperature of dark matter that exists. These effects must be included to get a realistic model of a dark matter halo’s mass distribution.

to galaxies moving within clusters

The Coma Cluster of galaxies, as seen with a composite of modern space and ground-based telescopes. The Coma Cluster, the largest galaxy cluster in our nearby Universe, is dominated by two giant elliptical galaxies, with over 1000 other spirals and ellipticals inside. The speed of the individual galaxies within the Coma Cluster is too great for the cluster to remain a bound entity based on its normal matter content alone. It can only remain a bound object under Einstein’s laws of General Relativity if a substantial amount of additional matter, i.e., a source of dark matter, exists throughout this cluster. The total mass of the cluster comes in at a few quadrillion solar masses.

to gravitational lensing

A distant, background galaxy is lensed so severely by the intervening, galaxy-filled cluster, that three independent images of the background galaxy, with significantly different light-travel times, can all be seen. In theory, a gravitational lens can reveal galaxies that are many times fainter than what could ever be seen without such a lens, but all gravitational lenses only take up a very narrow range of positions on the sky, being localized around individual mass sources.

to colliding galaxy clusters

The X-ray (pink) and overall matter (blue) maps of various colliding galaxy clusters show a clear separation between normal matter and gravitational effects, some of the strongest evidence for dark matter. The X-rays come in two varieties, soft (lower-energy) and hard (higher-energy), where galaxy collisions can create temperatures ranging from several hundreds of thousands of degrees up to ~100 million K. Meanwhile, the fact that the gravitational effects (in blue) are displaced from the location of the mass from the normal matter (pink) shows that dark matter must be present.

to the large-scale cosmic web,

The cosmic web that we see, the largest-scale structure in the entire Universe, is dominated by dark matter. On smaller scales, however, baryons can interact with one another and with photons, leading to stellar structure but also leading to the emission of energy that can be absorbed by other objects. Neither dark matter nor dark energy can accomplish that task; our Universe must possess a mix of dark matter, dark energy, and normal matter.

the independent lines of evidence supporting dark matter are overwhelming.

A Hubble Space Telescope view of the galaxy cluster MACS 0416 is annotated in cyan and magenta to show how it acts as a ‘gravitational lens,’ magnifying more distant background sources of light. Cyan highlights the distribution of mass in the cluster, mostly in the form of dark matter. Magenta highlights the degree to which the background galaxies are magnified, which is related to how the mass is specifically distributed within the cluster.

We’ve even determined how it’s distributed within galaxy clusters.

A galaxy cluster can have its mass reconstructed from the gravitational lensing data available. Most of the mass is found not inside the individual galaxies, shown as peaks here, but from the intergalactic medium within the cluster, where dark matter appears to reside. More granular simulations and observations can reveal dark matter substructure as well, with the data strongly agreeing with cold dark matter’s predictions. Without the gravitational effects of dark matter, most galaxies would tear themselves apart during episodes of major star-formation.

Now, a new method reveals dark matter’s presence more rigorously than ever before.

The giant galaxy cluster, Abell 2029, houses galaxy IC 1101 at its core. At 5.5 million light years across, over 100 trillion stars and the mass of nearly a quadrillion suns, it’s the largest known galaxy of all. In addition to the sources of light from each individual galaxy within a cluster, a contribution exists from the light from stars existing between the galaxies: intracluster light. This can only be measured from space, but with the newfound power of JWST, may become our best tracer of dark matter ever.

When galaxies interact within clusters, stars and tidal streams get stripped out.

Located within the Norma cluster of galaxies, ESO 137-001 speeds through the intracluster medium, where interactions between the matter in the space between galaxies and the rapidly-moving galaxy itself cause ram pressure-stripping, leading to a new population of tidal streams and intergalactic stars. Sustained interactions such as this can eventually remove all of the gas from within a galaxy.

This catapults stars into the intracluster medium: the space between galaxies.

The Tadpole Galaxy, shown here, has an enormous tail to it: evidence of tidal interactions. The gas that’s stripped out of one galaxy gets stretched into a long, thin strand, which contracts under its own gravity to form stars. The galactic element itself is comparable to the scale of the Milky Way, but the tidal stream alone is some ~280,000 light-years long: more than twice as large as our Milky Way’s estimated size. These features are common within galaxy clusters and will eventually lead to stars following the underlying dark matter distribution and creating the feature of intracluster light.

Although individually unresolvable, those stars still shine, emitting faint intracluster light.

Here, galaxy cluster MACS J0416.1-2403 isn’t in the process of collision, but rather is a non-interacting, asymmetrical cluster. It also emits a soft glow of intracluster light, produced by stars that are not part of any individual galaxy, helping reveal normal matter’s locations and distribution. Gravitational lensing effects are co-located with the matter, showing that “non-local” options for modified gravity do not apply to objects like this. Clusters of galaxies contain all sorts of small-scale structures within them, from black holes to planets to star-forming gas and more.

Because dark matter gravitationally attracts those stars, that intracluster light evolves as a dark matter tracer.

Along with lensing signals, this can map out dark matter substructure within galaxy clusters.

This Hubble image of massive galaxy cluster MACSJ 1206 shows the arcing and smeared-out features caused by the gravitational light-bending of the foreground galaxy cluster. Small-scale concentrations of dark matter, represented in blue, have been reconstructed based on the lensing data. Combining this lensing information with intracluster light information, which is another, independent tracer of dark matter, can reveal its presence and distribution as never before. We discover, through analyses like this, that all dark matter haloes consist of a rich set of dark matter substructures.

This technique has been successfully leveraged previously with Hubble, revealing suspicious and unexpected features.

This image shows the huge galaxy cluster MACS J1149.5+223, whose light took over 5 billion years to reach us. The huge mass of the cluster is bending the light from more distant objects. The light from these objects has been magnified and distorted due to gravitational lensing. The same effect is creating multiple images of the same distant objects. Meanwhile, the central location of the cluster clearly shows intracluster light: a remarkable tracer of dark matter.

But now, the JWST offers even greater scientific potential.

This almost-perfectly-aligned image composite shows the first JWST deep field’s view of the core of cluster SMACS 0723 and contrasts it with the older Hubble view. The JWST image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 is the first full-color, multiwavelength science image taken by the JWST. It is the deepest image ever taken of the ultra-distant Universe, with 87 ultra-distant galaxy candidates identified within it. They await spectroscopic follow-up and confirmation.

Mireia Montes and Ignacio Trujillo analyzed the original JWST deep field for intracluster light.

This 3-panel animation shows the original JWST deep field, a color-inverted version, and then a contrast/brightness enhanced version designed to bring out the intracluster light. By properly calibrating, processing, and analyzing this data, Montes and Trujillo were able to reveal two contributions, one toward the center and one toward the outskirts, to this observed intracluster light.

Additional processing and calibration revealed multiple contributors.

By properly calibrating the various contributions to reflected and external light effects and removing them, Montes and Trujillo were able to determine what fraction of the diffuse light is truly of intracluster origin, determining the stellar contributions and the profile of centrally distributed dark matter in the process.

Central mergers and outer accretion create this light.

Multiple features that contribute to the intracluster light, identified in the image here, can be teased out once the image is properly calibrated. The remaining light suggest that centrally, galactic mergers are the primary source of stars that contribute to the intracluster light, while on the outermore regions, galactic accretion plays a dominant role.

This “tracing” technique lets us see and map out dark matter as never before.

This image showcases the massive, distant galaxy cluster Abell S1063. As part of the Hubble Frontier Fields program, this is one of six galaxy clusters to be imaged for a long time in many wavelengths at high resolution. The diffuse, bluish-white light shown here is actual intracluster starlight, which was captured for the first time only in 2018. It traces out the location and density of dark matter more precisely than any other visual observation, and with JWST data forthcoming, now holds unprecedented power for tracing out dark matter’s distribution within clusters as never before.

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