Soliton Merger Rates and Enhanced Axion Dark Matter Decay

Understand

Solitons are observed to form in simulations of dark matter (DM) halos consisting of bosonic fields.

• We use the extended Press-Schechter formalism to compute the mass function of solitons, assuming various forms for the relationship between halo mass and soliton mass.
• We further provide a new calculation of the rate of soliton major mergers.
• Solitons composed of axion DM are unstable above a critical mass, and decay to either relativistic axions or photons, depending on the values of the coupling constants.