Tidal Suppression of Fuzzy Dark Matter Heating in Milky Way Satellite Galaxies

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new simulation framework that models fuzzy dark matter in satellite galaxies within the Milky Way's gravitational influence, showing tidal effects can reduce the predicted heating, impacting dark matter particle mass constraints.

Contribution

The study presents the first simulation framework incorporating realistic Milky Way tidal effects on fuzzy dark matter in satellite galaxies.

Findings

Tidal effects significantly suppress FDM heating in satellites.

Fornax galaxy case shows reduced tension with FDM models.

Implications for dark matter particle mass constraints.

Abstract

Many previous studies have imposed stringent constraints on the particle mass of fuzzy dark matter (FDM) by analyzing observations of Galactic satellite galaxies, which show no significant evidence of the heating effect predicted by FDM. However, these analyses have generally neglected the tidal influence of the Milky Way, which can substantially suppress the FDM-induced heating effect in satellites. This oversight arises from computational challenges of accurately capturing the tidal effects in FDM simulations. In this study, we present a novel simulation framework that, for the first time, enables the simulation of an FDM-stellar system within an observationally motivated gravitational potential of the Milky Way. This framework incorporates the diverse Galactic components, including the gravitational influence of the Large Magellanic Cloud. Using the Fornax dwarf galaxy as a case study, we demonstrate that tidal effects significantly alleviate the tension between observational data and the predicted heating effect for an FDM particle mass of $m_a\sim 10^{-22}$ eV.