TY - JOUR
T1 - Analysis of Bose-Einstein condensation times for self-interacting scalar dark matter
AU - Kirkpatrick, Kay
AU - Mirasola, Anthony E.
AU - Prescod-Weinstein, Chanda
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 authors. Published by the American Physical Society. Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.
PY - 2022/8/15
Y1 - 2022/8/15
N2 - We investigate the condensation time of self-interacting axionlike particles in a gravitational well, extending the prior work [K. Kirkpatrick, A. E. Mirasola, and C. Prescod-Weinstein, Phys. Rev. D 102, 103012 (2020)PRVDAQ2470-001010.1103/PhysRevD.102.103012] which showed that the Wigner formalism is a good analytic approach to describe a condensing scalar field. In the present work, we use this formalism to affirm that φ4 self-interactions will take longer than necessary to support the time scales associated with structure formation, making gravity a necessary part of the process to bring axion dark matter into a solitonic form. Here we show that when the axions' virial velocity is taken into account, the time scale associated with self-interactions will scale as λ2. This is consistent with recent numerical estimates, and it confirms that the Wigner formalism described in prior work [K. Kirkpatrick, A. E. Mirasola, and C. Prescod-Weinstein, Phys. Rev. D 102, 103012 (2020)PRVDAQ2470-001010.1103/PhysRevD.102.103012] is a helpful analytic framework to check computational work for potential numerical artifacts.
AB - We investigate the condensation time of self-interacting axionlike particles in a gravitational well, extending the prior work [K. Kirkpatrick, A. E. Mirasola, and C. Prescod-Weinstein, Phys. Rev. D 102, 103012 (2020)PRVDAQ2470-001010.1103/PhysRevD.102.103012] which showed that the Wigner formalism is a good analytic approach to describe a condensing scalar field. In the present work, we use this formalism to affirm that φ4 self-interactions will take longer than necessary to support the time scales associated with structure formation, making gravity a necessary part of the process to bring axion dark matter into a solitonic form. Here we show that when the axions' virial velocity is taken into account, the time scale associated with self-interactions will scale as λ2. This is consistent with recent numerical estimates, and it confirms that the Wigner formalism described in prior work [K. Kirkpatrick, A. E. Mirasola, and C. Prescod-Weinstein, Phys. Rev. D 102, 103012 (2020)PRVDAQ2470-001010.1103/PhysRevD.102.103012] is a helpful analytic framework to check computational work for potential numerical artifacts.
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U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevD.106.043512
DO - 10.1103/PhysRevD.106.043512
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85136131855
SN - 2470-0010
VL - 106
JO - Physical Review D
JF - Physical Review D
IS - 4
M1 - 043512
ER -