No Arabic abstract
Fuzzy Dark Matter (FDM), motivated by string theory, has recently become a hot candidate for dark matter. The rest mass of FDM is believed to be $sim 10^{-22}$eV and the corresponding de-Broglie wave length is $sim 1$kpc. Therefore, the quantum effect of FDM plays an important role in structure formation. In order to study the cosmological structure formation in FDM model, several simulation techniques have been introduced. We review the current status and challenges in the cosmological simulation for the FDM model in this paper.
Dark matter models involving a very light bosonic particle, generally known as Fuzzy Dark Matter (FDM), have been recently attracting great interest in the cosmology community, as their wave-like phenomenology would simultaneously explain the longstanding mis-detection of a dark matter particle and help easing the small-scale issues related to the standard Cold Dark Matter (CDM) scenario. With the present work, we initiate a series of papers aiming at investigating the evolution of FDM structures in a cosmological framework performed with our N-body code AX-GADGET, detailing for the first time in the literature how the actual scaling relations between solitonic cores and host haloes properties are significantly affected by the dynamical state, morphology and merger history of the individual systems. In particular, in this first paper we confirm the ability of AX-GADGET to correctly reproduce the typical FDM solitonic core and we employ it to study the non-linear evolution of eight FDM haloes in their cosmological context through the zoom-in simulation approach. We find that the scaling relations identified in previous works for isolated systems are generally modified for haloes evolving in a realistic cosmological environment, and appear to be valid only as a limit for the most relaxed and spherically symmetric systems.
We present an in-depth exploration of the phenomenon of dynamical friction in a universe where the dark matter is composed entirely of so-called Fuzzy Dark Matter (FDM), ultralight bosons of mass $msimmathcal{O}(10^{-22}),$eV. We review the classical treatment of dynamical friction before presenting analytic results in the case of FDM for point masses, extended mass distributions, and FDM backgrounds with finite velocity dispersion. We then test these results against a large suite of fully non-linear simulations that allow us to assess the regime of applicability of the analytic results. We apply these results to a variety of astrophysical problems of interest, including infalling satellites in a galactic dark matter background, and determine that emph{(1)}~for FDM masses $mgtrsim 10^{-21}, {rm eV}, c^{-2}$, the timing problem of the Fornax dwarf spheroidals globular clusters is no longer solved and emph{(2)}~the effects of FDM on the process of dynamical friction for satellites of total mass $M$ and relative velocity $v_{rm rel}$ should require detailed numerical simulations for $left(M/10^9~M_{odot}right) left(m/10^{-22}~{rm eV}right)left(100~{rm km}~{rm s}^{-1}/v_{rm rel}right) sim 1$, parameters which would lie outside the validated range of applicability of any currently developed analytic theory, due to transient wave structures in the time-dependent regime.
The cold dark matter (CDM) scenario has proved successful in cosmology. However, we lack a fundamental understanding of its microscopic nature. Moreover, the apparent disagreement between CDM predictions and subgalactic-structure observations has prompted the debate about its behaviour at small scales. These problems could be alleviated if the dark matter is composed of ultralight fields $m sim 10^{-22} text{eV}$, usually known as fuzzy dark matter (FDM). Some specific models, with axion-like potentials, have been thoroughly studied and are collectively referred to as ultralight axions (ULAs) or axion-like particles (ALPs). In this work we consider anharmonic corrections to the mass term coming from a repulsive quartic self-interaction. Whenever this anharmonic term dominates, the field behaves as radiation instead of cold matter, modifying the time of matter-radiation equality. Additionally, even for high masses, i.e. masses that reproduce the cold matter behaviour, the presence of anharmonic terms introduce a cut-off in the matter power spectrum through its contribution to the sound speed. We analyze the model and derive constraints using a modified version of CLASS and comparing with CMB and large-scale structure data.
We model the 21cm power spectrum across the Cosmic Dawn and the Epoch of Reionization (EoR) in fuzzy dark matter (FDM) cosmologies. The suppression of small mass halos in FDM models leads to a delay in the onset redshift of these epochs relative to cold dark matter (CDM) scenarios. This strongly impacts the 21cm power spectrum and its redshift evolution. The 21cm power spectrum at a given stage of the EoR/Cosmic Dawn process is also modified: in general, the amplitude of 21cm fluctuations is boosted by the enhanced bias factor of galaxy hosting halos in FDM. We forecast the prospects for discriminating between CDM and FDM with upcoming power spectrum measurements from HERA, accounting for degeneracies between astrophysical parameters and dark matter properties. If FDM constitutes the entirety of the dark matter and the FDM particle mass is 10-21eV, HERA can determine the mass to within 20 percent at 2-sigma confidence.
We study how tidal streams from globular clusters may be used to constrain the mass of ultra-light dark matter particles, called `fuzzy dark matter (FDM). A general feature of FDM models is the presence of ubiquitous density fluctuations in bound, virialized dark matter structures, on the scale of the de Broglie wavelength, arising from wave interference in the evolving dark matter distribution. These time-varying fluctuations can disturb the motions of stars, leading to potentially observable signatures in cold thin tidal streams in our own Galaxy. The study of this effect has been hindered by the difficulty in simulating the FDM wavefunction in Milky Way-sized systems. We present a simple method to evolve realistic wavefunctions in nearly static potentials, that should provide an accurate estimate of this granulation effect. We quantify the impact of FDM perturbations on tidal streams, and show that initially, while stream perturbations are small in amplitude, their power spectra exhibit a sharp cutoff corresponding to the de Broglie wavelength of the FDM potential fluctuations. Eventually, when stream perturbations become nonlinear, fold caustics generically arise that lead to density fluctuations with universal behavior. This erases the signature of the de Broglie wavelength in the stream density power spectrum, but we show that it will still be possible to determine the FDM mass in this regime, by considering the fluctuations in quantities like angular momenta or actions.