Abstract:
Hierarchical Cold Dark Matter (CDM) models constitute the prevailing
paradigm for interpreting the formation and evolution of structure in
the universe. A generic prediction of these models is that massive dark
matter halos are assembled by numerous merger events, leaving many
tightly bound entities known as substructure. I present results on the
structural evolution of these low-mass dark matter substructures
combining ``low-resolution'' satellites from cosmological N-body
simulations of parent halos with N=10^7 particles with high-resolution
individual subhalos orbiting within a static host potential. In contrast
to earlier investigations indicating that the central density cusp of
CDM subhalos becomes shallower as a result of tidal interactions, I find
that their inner density slope is unaffected even after several
pericentric passages. I discuss the implications of these results for
vital issues including the recent attempts to alleviate the missing
Galactic satellites problem by means of allowing the observed dwarf
spheroidal satellites to be embedded within dark halos with maximum
circular velocities as large as 60 km/s.