A Universal Mass Profile for Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxies?

(abridged) We apply the Jeans equation to estimate masses for eight of the brightest dSph galaxies. For Fornax we obtain a model-independent constraint on the maximum-circular velocity, Vmax=18_{-3}^{+5} km/s. Although we obtain only lower-limits of Vmax > 10 km/s for the remaining dSphs, we find that in all cases the enclosed mass at the projected half-light radius is well constrained and robust to a wide range of halo models and velocity anisotropies. We derive a simple analytic formula that estimates M(rhalf) accurately with respect to results from the full Jeans analysis. Applying this formula to the entire population of Local Group dSphs, we demonstrate a correlation such that M(rhalf)\propto rhalf^{1.4\pm 0.4}, or in terms of the mean density interior to the half-light radius, <rho> \propto rhalf^{-1.6\pm 0.4}. This relation is driven by the fact that the dSph data exhibit a correlation between global velocity dispersion and half-light radius. We argue that tidal forces are unlikely to have introduced this relation, but tides may have increased the scatter and/or altered the slope. While the data are well described by mass profiles ranging over a factor of < 2 in normalization (Vmax ~ 10-20 km/s), we consider the hypothesis that all dSphs are embedded within a "universal" dark matter halo. We show that in addition to the power law M\propto r^{1.4}, viable candidates include a cuspy "NFW" halo with Vmax ~ 15 km/s and scale radius r_0 ~ 800 pc, as well as a cored halo with Vmax ~ 13 km/s and r_0 ~ 150 pc. Finally, assuming that their measured velocity dispersions accurately reflect their masses, the smallest dSphs now allow us to resolve dSph densities at radii as small as a few tens of pc. At these small scales we find mean densities as large as <\rho> ~ 5 Msun/pc^3 (200 GeV/cm^3).