Core fragmentation in simplest superfluid dark matter scenario

Berezhiani, Lasha; Cintia, Giordano and Warkentin, Max (2021): Core fragmentation in simplest superfluid dark matter scenario. In: Physics Letters B, Vol. 819, 136422

Abstract

We study the structure of galactic halos within a scalar dark matter model, endowed with a repulsive quartic self-interaction, capable of undergoing the superfluid phase transition in high-density regions. We demonstrate that the thermalized cores are prone to fragmentation into superfluid droplets due to the Jeans instability. Furthermore, since cores of astrophysical size may be generated only when most of the particles comprising the halo reside in a highly degenerate phase-space, the well-known bound on the dark matter self-interaction cross section inferred from the collision of clusters needs to be revised, accounting for the enhancement of the interaction rate due to degeneracy. As a result, generation of kpc-size superfluid solitons, within the parameter subspace consistent with the Bullet Cluster bound, requires dark matter particles to be ultra-light. (C) 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V.

• Item Type: Journal article
• Faculties: Physics
• Subjects: 500 Science > 530 Physics
• ISSN: 0370-2693
• Language: English