Scalar dark matter vortex stabilization with black holes
Abstract
Galaxies and their dark-matter halos are commonly presupposed to spin. But it is an open question how this spin manifests in halos and soliton cores made of scalar dark matter (SDM, including fuzzy/wave/ultralight-axion dark matter). One way spin could manifest in a necessarily irrotational SDM velocity field is with a vortex. But recent results have cast doubt on this scenario, finding that vortices are generally unstable except with substantial repulsive self-interaction. In this paper, we introduce an alternative route to stability: in both (non-relativistic) analytic calculations and simulations, a black hole or other central mass at least as massive as a soliton can stabilize a vortex within it. This conclusion may also apply to AU-scale halos bound to the sun and stellar-mass-scale Bose stars.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2301.13220,
title = {Scalar dark matter vortex stabilization with black holes},
author = {Noah Glennon and Anthony E. Mirasola and Nathan Musoke and Mark C. Neyrinck and Chanda Prescod-Weinstein},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2301.13220},
year = {2023}
}
Comments
Accepted by JCAP. 22 pages, 5 figures. Supplementary animations at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7675830 or https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHrf0iQS5SY7Xt2sjqskF3kmHd00HrdfX