Narrowing the allowed mass range of ultralight bosons with the S2 star

TL;DR

This paper proposes using the orbital data of S2 stars in the Galactic Center to constrain the mass of ultralight bosons, potentially narrowing the allowed mass range for dark matter candidates through mock observations and statistical analysis.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method utilizing S-star orbital data to set bounds on ultralight boson mass, complementing existing astrophysical constraints.

Findings

Forecasts a bound on boson mass < 10^{-19} eV at 95% confidence

Demonstrates the effectiveness of S-star observations in constraining dark matter models

Shows that combined constraints can significantly narrow the boson mass range

Abstract

It is well known that N-body simulations of ultralight bosons show the formation of a solitonic dark matter core in the innermost part of the halo. The scale length of such a soliton depends on the inverse of the mass of the boson. On the other hand, the orbital motion of stars in the Galactic Center depends on the distribution of matter whether be it baryonic or dark, providing an excellent probe for the gravitational field of the region. In this Letter we propose the S-stars in the Galactic Center as a new observational tool, complementary to other astrophysical systems, to narrow down the range of allowed values for an ultralight dark matter candidate boson mass. We built mock catalogs mirroring the forthcoming astrometric and spectroscopic observations of S2, and we used a MCMC analysis to predict the accuracy down to which the mass of an ultralight boson may be bounded, and we showed that, once complementary constraints are considered, this analysis will help to restrict the allowed range of the boson mass. Our analysis forecasts the bound on the mass of an ultralight boson to be $< 10^{-19}$ eV at the 95% of confidence level.