http://arxiv.org/abs/2101.04958
Scalar Field Dark Matter (SFDM), comprised of ultralight ($\gtrsim 10^{-22}$ eV) bosons, is distinguished from massive ($\gtrsim$ GeV), collisionless Cold Dark Matter (CDM) by its novel structure-formation dynamics as Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) and quantum superfluid with wave-like properties, described by the Gross-Pitaevski and Poisson (GPP) equations. In the free-field (fuzzy) limit of SFDM (FDM), structure is inhibited below the de Broglie wavelength $\lambda_{\text{deB}}$, but resembles CDM on larger scales. Virialized haloes have solitonic cores of radius $\sim \lambda_{\text{deB}}$ that follow the ground-state attractor solution of GPP, surrounded by CDM-like envelopes. As a superfluid, SFDM is irrotational but can be unstable to vortex formation; outside of vortices it remains vorticity-free. We previously showed that halo cores can form vortices, from angular momentum expected during structure formation, if a strong enough repulsive self-interaction (SI) is present, which inhibits structure below a second length scale $\lambda_{\text{SI}}$, with $\lambda_{\text{SI}} > \lambda_{\text{deB}}$, suggesting FDM cores could not. FDM simulations later found vortices, but only outside halo cores, consistent with our suggestion. Extending our analysis now to FDM, we show explicitly that vortices should not arise in solitonic cores from angular momentum, modelling them as either Gaussian spheres or compressible, ($n = 2$)-polytropic, irrotational Riemann-S ellipsoids. For typical halo spin parameters, angular momentum per particle is below $\hbar$, the minimum required for one singly-quantized vortex in the center. Even for larger angular momentum, vortex formation is not energetically favoured.
S. Schobesberger, T. Rindler-Daller and P. Shapiro
Thu, 14 Jan 21
48/79
Comments: submitted to MNRAS, 27 pages, 7 figures