Dark matter in the Central Region of NGC 3256

• Main Authors: Israa Abdulqasim Mohammed Ali, Hwang, Chorng-Yuan, Zamri Zainal Abidin, Plunkett, Adele Laurie
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia 2018
• Online Access: http://journalarticle.ukm.my/12129/1/20%20Israa%20Abdulqasim%20Mohammed%20Ali.pdf; http://journalarticle.ukm.my/12129/; http://www.ukm.my/jsm/malay_journals/jilid47bil6_2018/KandunganJilid47Bil6_2018.html
• Institution: Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia

We investigated the central mass distribution of the luminous infrared galaxy NGC 3256 at a distance of 35 Mpc by using CO(1-0) observations of the Atacama Large Millimeter and sub-millimeter Array (ALMA) and near-IR data of the Two Micron Sky Survey (2MASS). We found that there is a huge amount of invisible dynamical mass (4.48 × 1010 ) in the central region of the galaxy. The invisible mass is likely caused by some dark matter, which might have a cuspy dark matter profile. We note that this dark matter is difficult to explain with the conventional Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) model, which is only applicable at a low acceleration regime, whereas the acceleration at the central region of the galaxy is relatively strong. Therefore, this discovery might pose a challenge to the conventional MOND models.