Cosmic ray feedback in galaxies and galaxy clusters: A pedagogical introduction and a topical review of the acceleration, transport, observables, and dynamical impact of cosmic rays.

Understanding the physical mechanisms that control galaxy formation is a fundamental challenge in contemporary astrophysics. Recent advances in the field of astrophysical feedback strongly suggest that cosmic rays (CRs) may be crucially important for our understanding of cosmological galaxy formation and evolution. The appealing features of CRs are their relatively long cooling times and relatively strong dynamical coupling to the gas.

ETHOS - an effective theory of structure formation: predictions for the high-redshift Universe - abundance of galaxies and reionization.

We contrast predictions for the high-redshift galaxy population and reionization history between cold dark matter (CDM) and an alternative self-interacting dark matter model based on the recently developed ETHOS framework that alleviates the small-scale CDM challenges within the Local Group. We perform the highest resolution hydrodynamical cosmological simulations (a 36 Mpc volume with gas cell mass of ∼ 10 M and minimum gas softening of ∼ 180 pc) within ETHOS to date - plus a CDM counterpart - to quantify the abundance of galaxies at high redshift and their impact on reionization. We find that ETHOS predicts galaxies with higher ultraviolet (UV) luminosities than their CDM counterparts and a faster build-up of the faint end of the UV luminosity function.

Is dark matter with long-range interactions a solution to all small-scale problems of Λ cold dark matter cosmology?

The cold dark matter paradigm describes the large-scale structure of the Universe remarkably well. However, there exists some tension with the observed abundances and internal density structures of both field dwarf galaxies and galactic satellites. Here, we demonstrate that a simple class of dark matter models may offer a viable solution to all of these problems simultaneously.

Gamma rays from dark matter annihilations strongly constrain the substructure in halos.

To fit recent data, e(+/-) from dark matter (DM) needs a boosted annihilation rate. This may imply an observable level of gamma rays from nearby galaxy clusters for the Fermi satellite. Using EGRET data, we limit the minimum mass of DM substructures to be about 5x10(3) times larger than for cold DM, meaning a cutoff similar to, e.