Solitons and halos for self-interacting scalar dark matter

Understand

We study the formation and evolution of solitons supported by repulsive self-interactions inside extended halos, for scalar-field dark matter scenarios.

• We focus on the semiclassical regime where the quantum pressure is typically much smaller than the self-interactions.
• We present numerical simulations, with initial conditions where the halo is described by the WKB approximation for its eigenfunction coefficients.
• We find that when the size of the system is of the order of the Jeans length associated with the self-interactions, a central soliton quickly forms and makes about 50% of the total mass.