16–20 Sept 2024
Europe/Rome timezone

Vortex Stability in Ultralight Scalar Solitons

17 Sept 2024, 16:25
5m
5 min talk Afternoon 2

Speaker

Anthony Mirasola (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)

Description

Galaxies and their dark-matter haloes are commonly presupposed to spin. But it is an open question how this spin manifests in haloes and soliton cores made of scalar dark matter (SDM, including fuzzy/wave/ultralight-axion dark matter). One way spin could manifest in a necessarily irrotational SDM velocity field is with a vortex. But recent results have cast doubt on this scenario, finding that vortices are generally unstable except with substantial repulsive self-interaction. We introduce an alternative route to stability: in both (non-relativistic) analytic calculations and simulations, a black hole or other central mass at least as massive as a soliton can stabilize a vortex within it. This conclusion may also apply to stellar-scale Bose stars.

Primary author

Anthony Mirasola (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)

Co-authors

Prof. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein (University of New Hampshire) Dr Mark Neyrinck (Ikerbasque, the Basque Foundation for Science) Dr Nathan Musoke (University of New Hampshire)

Presentation materials