First Star-Forming Structures in Fuzzy Cosmic Filaments
Name
PhysRevLett.123.141301.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
712.69 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
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Author(s)
Mocz, Philip
Fialkov, Anastasia
Vogelsberger, Mark
Becerra, Fernando
Amin, Mustafa A
Bose, Sownak
Boylan-Kolchin, Michael
Chavanis, Pierre-Henri
Hernquist, Lars
Lancaster, Lachlan
Date Issued
2019
Journal
Physical Review Letters
Publisher
American Physical Society (APS)
Version
Final published version
Abstract
© 2019 American Physical Society. In hierarchical models of structure formation, the first galaxies form in low-mass dark matter potential wells, probing the behavior of dark matter on kiloparsec scales. Even though these objects are below the detection threshold of current telescopes, future missions will open an observational window into this emergent world. In this Letter, we investigate how the first galaxies are assembled in a "fuzzy" dark matter (FDM) cosmology where dark matter is an ultralight ∼10-22 eV boson and the primordial stars are expected to form along dense dark matter filaments. Using a first-of-its-kind cosmological hydrodynamical simulation, we explore the interplay between baryonic physics and unique wavelike features inherent to FDM. In our simulation, the dark matter filaments show coherent interference patterns on the boson de Broglie scale and develop cylindrical solitonlike cores, which are unstable under gravity and collapse into kiloparsec-scale spherical solitons. Features of the dark matter distribution are largely unaffected by the baryonic feedback. On the contrary, the distributions of gas and stars, which do form along the entire filament, exhibit central cores imprinted by dark matter - a smoking gun signature of FDM.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1103/PHYSREVLETT.123.141301
