Ariane Dekker (U. Chicago)

The small-scale structure within the Galactic dark matter halo offers a variety of opportunities to test the nature of dark matter, which can be traced by galaxy observations. In particular, the size and velocity dispersion of local dwarf galaxies are impacted by deviations from LCDM in the matter power spectrum. I will show constraints on non-standard dark matter and inflationary models by combining high-resolution numerical simulation results with galaxy formation models. Moreover, the number count of satellite galaxies in the Milky-Way can be used to constrain warm and mixed dark matter models. We predict the number of galaxies in the Milky-Way by adopting a semi-analytical model for the subhalo population.