2026/07/08 by Kazım Yavuz Ekşi
Physics and Astronomy · #astro-ph.GA #cond-mat.quant-gas #gr-qc
17 pages, 4 figures. Revised to add connections to observational or phenomenological questions. Title changed
arxiv created 2026/07/29 · arxiv updated 2026/07/30
Bose-Einstein-condensed (BEC) and superfluid dark-matter (SFDM) halos can contain coherent, wave-supported cores whose angular momentum is carried by quantized vortices. When vortices form a tangle, reconnections convert part of the vortex kinetic energy into dark phonons, density waves, Kelvin waves, and vortex loops, providing a microscopic channel by which vortex structure can affect halo-core evolution. We estimate the dynamical importance of this channel by combining the local Gross-Pitaevskii (GP) reconnection law with a halo-scale vortex-line density calibrated against Schrödinger-Poisson (SP) simulations. Vortex reconnections cannot appreciably restructure a standard SP halo core under the fiducial assumptions: for a m=10-22 eV, rc=1 kpc soliton and a one-percent energy-transfer efficiency per event, an unforced network transfers at most 1.3% of the core virial energy in 10 Gyr. Reconnection converts ordered vortex energy into sound and smaller-scale excitations; we bound the cumulative transfer using a spectral scale measured in published SP halo simulations. To connect the result with measured systems, we match the standard soliton profile to half-light masses derived with a single mass estimator for eight classical Milky Way dwarf spheroidals. Assigning the measured aperture mass to the soliton gives ceilings of 0.98-4.52% at the Mocz line-density reference and 0.061-3.19% for a modest-rotation normalization. The largest value is a factor of 22 below the core virial-energy scale and limits the fixed-structure velocity change to 2.3%. The spectral reference represents fewer than one projected vortex crossing, so these are continuum upper limits; a vortex-free core has no reconnection heating. Reconnections remain worth testing because they are unavoidable when a tangle exists.