A&A 540, A70 (2012) Astronomy DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201118543 & c ESO 2012 Astrophysics Analytical properties of Einasto dark matter haloes E. Retana-Montenegro1 , E. Van Hese2, G. Gentile2,M.Baes2, and F. Frutos-Alfaro1 1 Escuela de Física, Universidad de Costa Rica, 11501 San Pedro, Costa Rica e-mail:
[email protected] 2 Sterrenkundig Observatorium, Universiteit Gent, Krijgslaan 281-S9, 9000 Gent, Belgium e-mail:
[email protected] Received 29 November 2011 / Accepted 19 January 2012 ABSTRACT Recent high-resolution N-body CDM simulations indicate that nonsingular three-parameter models such as the Einasto profile perform better than the singular two-parameter models, e.g. the Navarro, Frenk and White, in fitting a wide range of dark matter haloes. While many of the basic properties of the Einasto profile have been discussed in previous studies, a number of analytical properties are still not investigated. In particular, a general analytical formula for the surface density, an important quantity that defines the lensing properties of a dark matter halo, is still lacking to date. To this aim, we used a Mellin integral transform formalism to derive a closed expression for the Einasto surface density and related properties in terms of the Fox H and Meijer G functions, which can be written as series expansions. This enables arbitrary-precision calculations of the surface density and the lensing properties of realistic dark matter halo models. Furthermore, we compared the Sérsic and Einasto surface mass densities and found differences between them, which implies that the lensing properties for both profiles differ.