Halo Densities and Pericenter Distances of the Bright Milky Way Satellites As a Test of Dark Matter Physics

We provide new constraints on the dark matter halo density profile of MilkyWay (MW) dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs) using the phase-space distributionfunction (DF) method. After assessing the systematics of the approach againstmock data from the Gaia Challenge project, we apply the DF analysis to theentire kinematic sample of well-measured MW dwarf satellites for the firsttime. Contrary to previous findings for some of these objects, we find that theDF analysis yields results consistent with the standard Jeans analysis. Inparticular, in the present study we rediscover: i) a large diversity in theinner halo densities of dSphs (bracketed by Draco and Fornax), and ii) ananti-correlation between inner halo density and pericenter distance of thebright MW satellites. Regardless of the strength of the anti-correlation, wefind that the distribution of these satellites in density vs. pericenter spaceis inconsistent with the results of the high-res N-body simulations thatinclude a disk potential. Our analysis motivates further studies on the role ofinternal feedback and dark matter microphysics in these dSphs.