Dispersion velocity of galactic dark matter particles - Reply

Let us first respond to the Comments by Gates et al. (GKT) [1] in our Letter [2]. Among the various issues raised by GKT, the most crucial one is their claim that our result disagrees with the observations; this is not true. Their claim stems from (i) confusing model-dependent results (obtained on the basis of certain mass models) with actual observational constraints, (ii) confusing the classical mass models of the halo with models that probe its phase space structure, and (iii) using the notion of superposition not allowed by the selfconsistent Boltzmann-Poisson equations which involve a nonlinear coupling among the various components. Indeed, the very purpose of our Letter [2] was to present a method which would sensitively probe the density and dispersion velocity of dark-matter particles in the solar neighborhood, circumventing some of the problems encountered in previous analyses