paper

Temporal Correlations Between Fuzzy Dark Matter and Baryonic Matter in Virialized Core-Halo Structures

arXiv:2607.16917 · doi:10.1103/qv41-l822

Abstract

Fuzzy Dark Matter (FDM) predicts the existence of virialized halos with interference-driven granular structure generated by the wave nature of ultralight bosons. Since these fluctuations produce time-dependent gravitational fields, they can be proposed as a potential source of observable dynamical effects on baryonic matter. In this work we test whether such fluctuations generate measurable temporal correlations between FDM and a coupled gas component. We evolve coupled FDM-gas configurations with the Schrödinger-Poisson-Euler system in three dimensions. The FDM component is initialized through multimerger configurations that relax toward core-halo structures, while the baryonic component is modeled as an ideal gas. After virialization, we analyze the temporal fluctuations of both components through correlation functions and spectral diagnostics. The FDM density field shows fluctuations with significant high-frequency content, whereas the gas develops smoother and longer-lived coherent structures. Although the gas dynamically responds to the gravitational potential generated by the FDM halo, we find no strong temporal correlation between the interference-driven fluctuations of FDM and the gas dynamics. This behavior persists across the explored range of gas temperatures. Our results indicate that baryonic matter reacts to the global gravitational potential of the virialized halo rather than to the detailed phase-dependent granular structure of FDM. This weak temporal coupling may limit the possibility of directly detecting FDM granularity through local baryonic temporal fluctuations.

11 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D

References in corpus (22)