Tidal evolution of dark matter annihilation rates in subhalos
Dark matter halos grow by hierarchical clustering as they merge together to produce ever larger structures. During these merger processes, the smaller halo can potentially survive as a subhalo of the larger halo, so a galaxy-scale halo today likely possesses a rich abundance of substructure. This substructure can greatly boost the rate of dark matter annihilation within the host halo, but the precise magnitude of this boost is clouded by uncertainty about the survival prospects of these subhalos. In particular, tidal forces gradually strip material from the subhalos, reducing their annihilation signals and potentially destroying them. In this work, we use high-resolution idealized N-body simulations to develop and tune a model that can predict the impact of this tidal evolution on the annihilation rates within subhalos. This model predicts the time evolution of a subhalo’s annihilation rate as a function of three physically motivated parameters of the host-subhalo system: the energy injected into subhalo particles per orbit about the host, the ratio of stretching to compressive tidal forces, and the radial distribution of tidal heating within the subhalo. Our model will improve the accuracy of predictions of the magnitude and morphology of annihilation signals from dark matter substructure. Additionally, our parametrization can describe the time evolution of other subhalo properties, so it has implications for understanding aspects of subhalo tidal evolution beyond the annihilation rate.