The Effect of Boundary Conditions on Structure Formation in Fuzzy Dark Matter

Understand

We illustrate the effect of boundary conditions on the evolution of structure in Fuzzy Dark Matter.

• Scenarios explored include the evolution of single, ground-state equilibrium solutions of the Schr\"odinger-Poisson system, the relaxation of a Gaussian density fluctuation, mergers of two equilibrium configurations, and the random merger of many solitons.
• For comparison, each scenario is evolved twice, with isolation boundary conditions and periodic boundary conditions, the two commonly used to simulate isolated systems and structure formation, respectively.
• Replacing isolation boundary conditions by periodic boundary conditions changes the domain topology and dynamics of each scenario, by affecting the outcome of gravitational cooling.