DARK is an ANR-funded (https://anr.fr/Project-ANR-22-CE31-0006) project led by Nicolas Bouché & Jérémy Fensch at CRAL, with the goal of understanding the dark matter content of the Universe and how it affects the dynamics of galaxies.

The Universe’s matter content is dominated by a non-visible dark matter (DM). The scientific objectives for this project are to study the DM content of young distant galaxies from their rotation curves, to determine the shape of DM profiles and the evolution of their properties with redshift and/or the relation to the galaxy properties under various frameworks in the standard DM framework and beyond. Hence, this program will potentially bring new constraints on alternative models of DM. More specifically, we will study the DM profiles (cores vs. cusp) and the statistical viability of these DM models on a large sample made of several hundred distant galaxies.

From an observational perspective, rotation curves are still the best tool to constrain the properties of DM halos in galaxies. Thanks to a technological breakthrough and to several large programs with MUSE on the VLT, we will be able to perform this type of study (namely disk/halo decomposition) on several hundreds of individual rotation curves of distant galaxies. In addition, we will use state-of-the-art hydrodynamical simulations to further validate the methodology and test its limitations.