ABSTRACT. We use dissipationless N-body simulations to investigate the evolution of the true coarse-grained phase-space density distribution f(x, v) in equal-mass mergers between dark matter (DM) halos. The halo models are constructed with various asymptotic power-law indices ρ r ^–γ ranging from steep cusps to core-like profiles and we employ the phase-space density estimator "EnBid" developed by Sharma & Steinmetz to compute f(x, v). The adopted force resolution allows robust phase-space density profile estimates in the inner ~1% of the virial radii of the simulated systems. We confirm that merger events result in a decrease of the coarse-grained phase-space density in accordance with expectations from Mixing Theorems for collisionless systems. We demonstrate that binary mergers between identical DM halos produce remnants that retain excellent memories of the inner slopes and overall shapes of the phase-space density distribution of their progenitors. The robustness of the phase-space density profiles holds for a range of orbital energies, and a variety of encounter configurations including sequences of several consecutive merger events, designed to mimic hierarchical merging, and collisions occurring at different cosmological epochs. If the progenitor halos are constructed with appreciably different asymptotic power-law indices, we find that the inner slope and overall shape of the phase-space density distribution of the remnant are substantially closer to that of the initial system with the steepest central density cusp. These results explicitly demonstrate that mixing is incomplete in equal-mass mergers between DM halos, as it does not erase memory of the progenitor properties. Our results also confirm the recent analytical predictions of Dehnen regarding the preservation of merging self-gravitating central density cusps.

Key words: cosmology: theory; dark matter; galaxies: halos; galaxies: interactions; galaxies: structure; methods: N-body simulations

Print publication: Issue 2 (2009 June 20)
Received 2008 December 19, accepted for publication 2009 April 14
Published 2009 June 4