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Axion Minicluster Halo Limits from Wide Binary Disruption

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2024-09-05 v1 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics

Abstract

Axionic dark matter can form miniclusters and minicluster halos from inhomogenuities in the early Universe. If MCHs are sufficiently massive, their existence can be revealed by small-scale gravitational tidal perturbation to halo-like binary star system in the Galaxy. The observed population of the Milky Way's wide-separation binaries with aO(0.1)a\gtrsim\mathcal{O}(0.1)\, parsec offer a sensitive test to dynamic evaporation from MCHs. Considering data from recent GAIA observations, we derive significant constraints on the MCH fraction of the galactic dark matter halo. For several scenarios including dense MCHs and isolated minicluster models, these limits will apply to axion-like particles in the mass range ma10151012eVm_{a}\sim 10^{-15}-10^{-12}\,\rm eV and ma10191016eVm_{a}\sim 10^{-19}-10^{-16}\,\rm eV, respectively.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2409.02468,
  title  = {Axion Minicluster Halo Limits from Wide Binary Disruption},
  author = {Zihang Wang and Yu Gao},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2409.02468},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

9 pages, 5 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-28T18:33:36.826Z