English

Subsonic accretion and dynamical friction for a black hole moving through a self-interacting scalar dark matter cloud

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2025-07-31 v2 Astrophysics of Galaxies General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

We investigate the flow around a black hole moving through a cloud of self-interacting scalar dark matter. We focus on the large scalar mass limit, with quartic self-interactions, and on the subsonic regime. We show how the scalar field behaves as a perfect gas of adiabatic index γad=2\gamma_{\rm ad}=2 at large radii while the accretion rate is governed by the relativistic regime close to the Schwarzschild radius. We obtain analytical results thanks to large-radius expansions, which are also related to the small-scale relativistic accretion rate. We find that the accretion rate is greater than for collisionless particles, by a factor c/cs1c/c_s \gg 1, but smaller than for a perfect gas, by a factor cs/c1c_s/c \ll 1, where csc_s is the speed of sound. The dynamical friction is smaller than for a perfect gas, by the same factor cs/c1c_s/c \ll 1, and also smaller than Chandrasekhar's result for collisionless particles, by a factor cs/(cC)c_s/(cC), where CC is the Coulomb logarithm. It is also smaller than for fuzzy dark matter, by a factor v0/c1v_0/c \ll 1.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2204.09401,
  title  = {Subsonic accretion and dynamical friction for a black hole moving through a self-interacting scalar dark matter cloud},
  author = {Alexis Boudon and Philippe Brax and Patrick Valageas},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2204.09401},
  year   = {2025}
}