What do the smallest galaxies tell us about dark matter?

Matt Walker

Carnegie Mellon University

I will discuss how to translate stellar kinematics observed in the nearest, smallest and and 'darkest' galaxies into a test of the standard hypothesis that dark matter consists of 'cold' and 'collisionless' (i.e., weakly interacting) particles. This model now seems to require that baryon-driven processes (e.g., energetic feedback from supernova explosions) alters the internal structure of galactic dark matter halos systematically with respect to predictions derived from cosmological N-body simulations. I will discuss future work that will let us judge whether such reconciliation is energetically feasible.