Wide Binary Evaporation by Dark Solitons: Implications from the GAIA Catalog

Abstract

An analytic calculation is given for binary star evaporation under the tidal perturbation from randomly distributed, spatially extended dark objects. In particular, the Milky Way's wide binary star population is susceptible to such disruption from dark matter solitons of comparable and larger sizes. We identify high-probability `halo-like' wide binaries in GAIA EDR3 with separations larger than 0.1 parsec. Survival of the farthest-separated candidates will provide a novel gravitational probe to dark matter in the form of solitons. In the case of dilute axion-like boson stars, the observational sensitivity extends into the axion mass range $m_a\sim 10^{-17}-10^{-15}$ eV.

Comments: 23 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables