Measuring the boson mass of fuzzy dark matter with stellar proper motions

Abstract

Fuzzy Dark Matter (FDM) is among the most suitable candidates to replace WIMPs and to resolve the puzzling mystery of dark matter. A galactic dark matter halo made of these ultralight bosonic particles leads to the formation of a solitonic core surrounded by quantum interference patterns that, on average, reproduce a Navarro-Frenk-White-like mass density profile in the outskirts of the halo. The structure of such a core is determined once the boson mass and the total mass of the halo are set. We investigated the capability of future astrometric Theia-like missions to detect the properties of such a halo within the FDM model, namely the boson mass and the core radius. To this aim, we built mock catalogs containing three-dimensional positions and velocities of stars within a target dwarf galaxy. We exploited these catalogs using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm and found that measuring the proper motion of at least 2000 stars within the target galaxy, with uncertainty ${\sigma }_v\le 3$ km/s on the velocity components, will constrain the boson mass and the core radius with 3\% accuracy. Furthermore, the transition between the solitonic core and the outermost NFW-like density profile could be detected with an uncertainty of 7\%. Such results would not only help to confirm the existence of FDM, but they would also be useful for alleviating the current tension between galactic and cosmological estimations of the boson mass, or demonstrating the need for multiple particles with a broad mass spectrum as naturally arise String Axiverse.

11 pages, 3 Figures, 4 Tables

References in corpus (17)

• Ultralight scalars as cosmological dark matter
• Too big to fail? The puzzling darkness of massive Milky Way subhaloes
• Cosmic Structure as the Quantum Interference of a Coherent Dark Wave
• Understanding the Core-Halo Relation of Quantum Wave Dark Matter, $\psi$DM, from 3D Simulations
• Bose-Einstein Condensation of Dark Matter Axions
• A search for ultra-light axions using precision cosmological data
• Strong bound on canonical ultra-light axion dark matter from the Lyman-alpha forest
• Dark matters on the scale of galaxies
• Einstein rings modulated by wavelike dark matter from anomalies in gravitationally lensed images
• Narrowing the mass range of Fuzzy Dark Matter with Ultra-faint Dwarfs
• Einstein, Planck and Vera Rubin: relevant encounters between the Cosmological and the Quantum Worlds
• Faint objects in motion: the new frontier of high precision astrometry
• Bounding the mass of ultralight bosonic Dark Matter particles with the motion of the S2 star around Sgr A*
• Wave Dark Matter and Ultra Diffuse Galaxies
• The intrinsic ellipticity of dwarf spheroidal galaxies: constraints from the Andromeda system
• HSTPROMO Internal Proper Motion Kinematics of Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxies: I. Velocity Anisotropy and Dark Matter Cusp Slope of Draco
• The proper motion of stars in dwarf galaxies: distinguishing central density cusps from cores

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Signatures of Fuzzy Dark Matter Inside Radial Critical Curves