Tidal Heating of Stellar Clusters in Fuzzy Dark Matter Halos

TL;DR

This paper investigates how tidal heating affects stellar clusters in fuzzy dark matter halos, emphasizing the importance of halo structure and environment in constraining dark matter properties.

Contribution

It presents simulations across a wide mass range showing tidal heating as a key mechanism when the de Broglie wavelength exceeds cluster size, refining previous bounds.

Findings

Tidal heating dominates in low-mass FDM halos with large de Broglie wavelengths.

Reduced soliton mass and halo stripping can suppress stellar heating.

Halo structure and environment are crucial for FDM mass constraints.

Abstract

Ultra-faint dwarf galaxies serve as powerful testing grounds for wave dark matter models through dynamical stellar heating. Previous simulation-based work derived a lower bound on the fuzzy dark matter particle mass using a diffusion approximation valid only when the de Broglie wavelength is much smaller than the galaxy's half-light radius. We simulate the dynamical evolution of stellar clusters in FDM halos across a wide mass range and find that for sufficiently low masses, where the de Broglie wavelength is much larger than the cluster size, tidal heating is the main mechanism. We also find that a reduced soliton mass and tidally stripped halo can suppress the heating. We demonstrate that in order to constrain FDM mass from cluster heating, the structure and environment of the FDM halo must be carefully considered.