Can bosenovae deplete the galactic dark matter?
Abstract
No: neither through the bosenovae of gravitational atoms formed around stars and compact objects, nor through those of boson stars formed in the galactic dark-matter halo. We assume that all the dark matter consists of ultralight bosons with attractive self-interactions, which can be captured in the gravitational potential of astrophysical objects or condense into self-gravitating configurations. When these systems collapse in a bosenova, part of their mass is turned into relativistic radiation that escapes the galaxy. We bound the mass that a single object can eject and sum it over realistic models of the Milky Way and of other types of galaxies. For gravitational atoms, with realistic stellar populations and stellar evolution, the stars of the Milky Way deplete at most εGA⋆≃3×10−9 of its halo, and the pump is equally negligible in other galaxies. The central black hole, Sgr A*, could reach εGA∼10−3, but only for a boson mass disfavoured by ultrafaint dwarf galaxies and beyond the validity of the perturbative treatment, where only a geometric bound on the dark matter flux is available. For boson stars feeding on the rest of the halo, these would radiate at most ∼3×10−5 of the Milky-Way halo and 0.1% of a DF2-like one.
Related
- Comment on "Fermi-LAT Galactic Center Excess Morphology of Dark Matter in Simulations of the Milky Way Galaxy"
- Inelastic Dark Photon Dark Matter for the LUX-ZEPLIN High-Recoil Event and the Galactic Halo Gamma-Ray Excess
- A Simple Dark Matter Model to Explain the LZ Event and Galactic Center Excess
- Self-interacting dark matter delays bar growth in an isolated gas-rich galactic disk: torque-resolved numerical evidence
- Galactic constraints on spinning primordial black hole dark matter from interstellar dust heating
BibTeX
@misc{gomez2026bosenovae,
title = {{Can bosenovae deplete the galactic dark matter?}},
author = {Samuel Gómez Gómez and Joshua Eby},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.20507},
eprint = {2610.20507},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.20507},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Can bosenovae deplete the galactic dark matter?
AU - Samuel Gómez Gómez
AU - Joshua Eby
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/14
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.20507
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.20507
AB - No: neither through the bosenovae of gravitational atoms formed around stars and compact objects, nor through those of boson stars formed in the galactic dark-matter halo. We assume that all the dark matter consists of ultralight bosons with attractive self-interactions, which can be captured in the gravitational potential of astrophysical objects or condense into self-gravitating configurations. When these systems collapse in a bosenova, part of their mass is turned into relativistic radiation that escapes the galaxy. We bound the mass that a single object can eject and sum it over realistic models of the Milky Way and of other types of galaxies. For gravitational atoms, with realistic stellar populations and stellar evolution, the stars of the Milky Way deplete at most ε^GA_⋆≃3×10^−9 of its halo, and the pump is equally negligible in other galaxies. The central black hole, Sgr A^*, could reach ε^GA∼10^−3, but only for a boson mass disfavoured by ultrafaint dwarf galaxies and beyond the validity of the perturbative treatment, where only a geometric bound on the dark matter flux is available. For boson stars feeding on the rest of the halo, these would radiate at most ∼3×10^−5 of the Milky-Way halo and 0.1% of a DF2-like one.
ER -