Engineering topics

Feng, Wei-Xiang

Publications and source records attributed to Feng, Wei-Xiang.

4 records

DOE OSTI2022

Self-interacting dark scalar spikes around black holes via relativistic Bondi accretion

For this work, we consider the spike mass density profile in a dark halo by self-consistently solving the relativistic Bondi accretion of dark matter onto a non-spining black hole of mass M. We assume that the dominant component of the dark matter in the halo is a Standard model gauge-singlet scalar. Its mass m ≃ 10 -5 eV and quartic self-coupling λ ≲ 10 19 are constrained to be compatible with the properties of galactic dark halos. In the hydrodynamic limit, we find that the accretion rate is bounded from below, M min = 96πG 2 M 2 m 4 /λ$\hbar$ 3 . Therefore, for M = 10 6 M ⊙ we have M min ≃ 1.41 x 10 -9 M ⊙ yr -1 , which is subdominant compared to the Eddington accretion of baryons. The spike density profile ρ0(r) within the self-gravitating regime cannot be fitted well by a single-power law but a double-power one. Despite that, we can fit ρ 0 (r) piecewise and find that ρ 0 (r) ∝ r -1.20 near the sound horizon, ρ 0 (r) ∝ r -1.00 towards the Bondi radius and ρ 0 (r) ∝ r -1.08 for the region in between. This contrasts with more cuspy ρ 0 (r) ∝ r -1.75 for dark matter with Coulomb-like self-interaction.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2022

Gravothermal phase transition, black holes and space dimensionality

In the framework of gravothermal evolution of an ideal monatomic fluid, I examine the dynamical instability of the fluid sphere in (N+1) dimensions by exploiting Chandrasekhar’s criterion to each quasi-static equilibrium along the sequence of the evolution. Once the instability is triggered, it would probably collapse into a black hole if no other interaction halts the process. From this viewpoint, the privilege of (3+1)-dimensional spacetime is manifest, as it is the marginal dimensionality in which the ideal monatomic fluid is stable but not too stable. Moreover, it is the unique dimensionality that allows stable hydrostatic equilibrium with positive cosmological constant. While all higher dimensional (N > 3) spheres are genuinely unstable. In contrast, in (2+1)-dimensional spacetime it is too stable either in the context of Newton’s theory of Gravity or Einstein’s General Relativity. It is well-known that the role of negative cosmological constant is crucial to have the Banados-Teitelboim-Zanelli (BTZ) black hole solution and the equilibrium configurations of a fluid disk. Owing to the negativeness of the cosmological constant, there is no unstable configuration for a homogeneous fluid disk to collapse into a naked singularity, which supports the Cosmic Censorship Conjecture. However, BTZ holes of mass M BTZ > 0 could emerge from collapsing fluid disks. The implications of spacetime dimensionality are briefly discussed.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2022

Dynamical instability of collapsed dark matter halos

A self-interacting dark matter halo can experience gravothermal collapse, resulting in a central core with an ultrahigh density. It can further contract and collapse into a black hole, a mechanism proposed to explain the origin of supermassive black holes. We study dynamical instability of the core in general relativity. Here we use a truncated Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution to model the dark matter distribution and solve the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff equation. For given model parameters, we obtain a series of equilibrium configurations and examine their dynamical instability based on considerations of total energy, binding energy, fractional binding energy, and adiabatic index. Our numerical results indicate that the core can collapse into a black hole when the fractional binding energy reaches 0.035 with a central gravitational redshift of 0.5. We further show for the instability to occur in the classical regime, the boundary temperature of the core should be at least 10% of the mass of dark matter particles; for a 10 9 M ⊙ seed black hole, the particle mass needs to be larger than a few keV. These results can be used to constrain different collapse models, in particular, those with dissipative dark matter interactions.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2021

Seeding Supermassive Black Holes with Self-interacting Dark Matter: A Unified Scenario with Baryons

Observations show that supermassive black holes (SMBHs) with a mass of ~10 9 M ⊙ exist when the universe is just 6% of its current age. We propose a scenario where a self-interacting dark matter halo experiences gravothermal instability and its central region collapses into a seed black hole. The presence of baryons in protogalaxies could significantly accelerate the gravothermal evolution of the halo and shorten collapse timescales. The central halo could dissipate its angular momentum remnant via viscosity induced by the self-interactions. The host halo must be on high tails of density fluctuations, implying that high-z SMBHs are expected to be rare in this scenario. We further derive conditions for triggering general relativistic instability of the collapsed region. Furthermore, our results indicate that self-interacting dark matter can provide a unified explanation for diverse dark matter distributions in galaxies today and the origin of SMBHs at redshifts z ~ 6–7.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗