Understand
Simulations of cold dark matter make robust predictions about the slope and normalization of the dark matter halo and subhalo mass functions on small scales.
- Recent observational advances utilizing strong gravitational lensing have demonstrated the ability of this technique to place constraints on these quantities on subgalactic scales corresponding to dark matter halo masses of $10^6$--$10^9\mathrm{M}_\odot$.
- On these scales the physics of baryons, which make up around 17% of the matter content of the Universe but which are not included in pure dark matter N-body simulations, are expected to affect the growth of structure and the collapse of dark matter halos.
- In this work we develop a semi-analytic model to predict the amplitude and slope of the dark matter halo and subhalo mass functions on subgalactic scales in the presence of baryons.