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D.A. Stiff, L.M. Widrow (Queen's U.), J. Frieman (Fermilab/U. of Chicago)
The Milky Way may have formed through the aggregation of many small, dark matter dominated objects. If this process is still on going, there is the possibility that a subhalo will be passing through our location in the Galaxy today. Such an event may have important implications for dark matter search experiments and in particular, leave a unique signature in the energy spectrum of dark matter particles detected in terrestrial search experiments.
We calculate the probability distribution function (PDF) for the local dark matter density including the effects of recently merged subhalos. An analytic model is used to estimate the accretion rate of subhalos while N-body simulations incorporate the effects of tidal disruption.