A soliton in cold dark matter at the origin of quasars

Tom Broadhurst, researcher Ikerbasque in the Department of Theoretical Physics of the UPV / EHU, has participated along with scientists from the National Taiwan University in a research that involves the reinterpretation of the nature of quasars, the brightest objects in the universe, with a luminosity that can be 100 times greater than that of the Milky Way, our galaxy, which contains between 200 and 400 billion stars.

The image shows the process of forming a galaxy in the simulation of waves of dark matter by Dr. Broadhurst et al. It can be seen that the structure responds to a pattern of complex "granular" interferences, with a massive wave located in the center that can attract a large amount of gas to form a quasar.

Quasars (quasi-stellar radio source - quasi-stellar radio sources) are compact regions of hot gas at the center of massive galaxies, surrounding a supermassive black hole; The energy they emit comes from the compression and heating of the matter that falls into the black hole's accretion disk.

One of the main enigmas surrounding the quasars, being very old objects, given the distance they are, is the large amount of matter they concentrate from the start, when it is assumed that galaxies accumulate matter gradually, with small initial amounts.

The research carried out by Dr. Broadhurst and his colleagues, published in Physics Review Letters, helps explain this mystery. Conducting simulations of dark matter such as a Bose-Einstein condensate (a state of cernaco bosons at absolute zero, in which macroscopic quantum effects are appreciable, have found in this context that massive solitonic waves can form a dense nucleus within each galaxy.

A soliton is a solitary wave that propagates without deforming, and can reach large masses in relatively compact sizes, which would explain the ability of quasars to attract and focus the necessary gas to be so luminous, despite being such old objects. This question has been a real headache for scientists for years.

Reference:

Hsi-Yu Schive, Ming-Hsuan Liao, Tak-Pong Woo, Shing-Kwong Wong, Tzihong Chiueh, Tom Broadhurst, and W-Y. Pauchy Hwang (2014) Understanding the Core-Halo Relation of Quantum Wave Dark Matter, ψDM, from 3D Simulations, Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 261302 DOI: 10.1103 / PhysRevLett.113.261302

Materials supplied by UPV / EHU Komunikazioa