English

Weak annihilation cusp inside the dark matter spike about a black hole

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2016-06-22 v1 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

We reinvestigate the effect of annihilations on the distribution of collisionless dark matter (DM) in a spherical density spike around a massive black hole. We first construct a very simple, pedagogic, analytic model for an isotropic phase space distribution function that accounts for annihilation and reproduces the "weak cusp" found by Vasiliev for DM deep within the spike and away from its boundaries. The DM density in the cusp varies as r1/2r^{-1/2} for ss-wave annihilation, where rr is the distance from the central black hole, and is not a flat "plateau" profile. We then extend this model by incorporating a loss cone that accounts for the capture of DM particles by the hole. The loss cone is implemented by a boundary condition that removes capture orbits, resulting in an anisotropic distribution function. Finally, we evolve an initial spike distribution function by integrating the Boltzmann equation to show how the weak cusp grows and its density decreases with time. We treat two cases, one for ss-wave and the other for pp-wave DM annihilation, adopting parameters characteristic of the Milky Way nuclear core and typical WIMP models for DM. The cusp density profile for pp-wave annihilation is weaker, varying like r0.34\sim r^{-0.34}, but is still not a flat plateau.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1606.01248,
  title  = {Weak annihilation cusp inside the dark matter spike about a black hole},
  author = {Stuart L. Shapiro and Jessie Shelton},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1606.01248},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

To appear in Phys. Rev. D