Subsonic accretion and dynamical friction for a black hole moving through a self-interacting scalar dark matter cloud
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 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 , but smaller than for a perfect gas, by a factor , where is the speed of sound. The dynamical friction is smaller than for a perfect gas, by the same factor , and also smaller than Chandrasekhar's result for collisionless particles, by a factor , where is the Coulomb logarithm. It is also smaller than for fuzzy dark matter, by a factor .
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}
}