Fate of scalar dark matter solitons around supermassive galactic black holes

TL;DR

This paper investigates the behavior of scalar-field dark matter solitons around supermassive black holes, showing that they can persist over cosmological timescales due to a critical flux profile.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of scalar-field soliton infall onto black holes in the large scalar-mass limit, revealing a critical steady state solution with finite flux.

Findings

The scalar field profile is derived from the Schwarzschild radius outward.

A critical flux profile similar to hydrodynamic transonic solutions is identified.

The soliton can survive for many Hubble times due to small fluxes.

Abstract

In scalar-field dark matter scenarios, a scalar-field soliton could form at the center of galactic halos, around the supermassive black holes that sit at the center of galaxies. Focusing on the large scalar-mass limit, where the soliton is formed by the balance between self-gravity and a repulsive self-interaction, we study the infall of the scalar field onto the central Schwarzschild black hole. We derive the scalar-field profile, from the Schwarzschild radius to the large radii dominated by the scalar cloud. We show that the steady state solution selects the maximum allowed flux, with a critical profile that is similar to the transonic solution obtained for the hydrodynamic case. This finite flux, which scales as the inverse of the self-interaction coupling, is small enough to allow the dark matter soliton to survive for many Hubble times.