English

Unified Gas Heating Constraints on Extended Dark Matter Compact Objects

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2026-03-06 v2 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics Astrophysics of Galaxies High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena

Abstract

We present the first unified constraints on a broad class of extended dark matter compact objects (EDCOs) from interstellar gas heating. These include axion stars, Q-balls, axion miniclusters, dark fermion stars and primordial black holes surrounded by dark matter halos, which arise in a wide range of theories beyond the Standard Model. As such massive objects traverse the interstellar medium, their gravitational influence generates wakes and, if sufficiently compact, drives accretion flows that heat gas in their vicinity. Our general framework extends standard dynamical friction treatments by incorporating finite-size effects, internal density profiles, gas penetration through objects, and criteria for accretion disk formation. We perform detailed numerical calculations of wake formation and gas heating and apply our results to the Leo T dwarf galaxy, establishing new constraints on the dark matter fraction in EDCOs heavier than a solar mass spanning several orders of magnitude in both mass and abundance.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2508.18344,
  title  = {Unified Gas Heating Constraints on Extended Dark Matter Compact Objects},
  author = {TaeHun Kim and Philip Lu and Volodymyr Takhistov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.18344},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

Matches with the published version; 44 pages, 11 figures

R2 v1 2026-07-01T05:05:12.974Z