Oscillations and Random Walk of the Soliton Core in a Fuzzy Dark Matter Halo

Understand

A Fuzzy Dark Matter (FDM) halo consists of a soliton core close to the center and an NFW-like density profile in the outer region.

• Previous investigations found that the soliton core exhibits temporal oscillations and random walk excursions around the halo center.
• Analyzing a set of numerical simulations, we show that both phenomena can be understood as the results of wave interference -- a suitable superposition of the ground (solitonic) state and excited states in a fixed potential suffices to account for the main features of these phenomena.
• Such an eigenmode analysis can shed light on the evolution of a satellite halo undergoing tidal disruption.