https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-018-5835-8
Regular Article - Theoretical Physics
Slowly rotating Bose Einstein condensate galactic dark matter halos, and their rotation curves
1
School of Physics and Yat Sen School, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, 510275, People’s Republic of China
2
Department of Astronomy, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, People’s Republic of China
3
Department of Science and Environmental Studies, The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China
4
Department of Physics, Babes-Bolyai University, Kogalniceanu Street, 400084, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
5
School of Physics, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, 510275, People’s Republic of China
6
Department of Mathematics, University College London, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT, UK
7
School of Physics, State Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Material and Technology, Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Display Material and Technology, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, 510275, People’s Republic of China
8
Department of Applied Mathematics, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China
* e-mail: t.harko@ucl.ac.uk
Received:
26
February
2018
Accepted:
21
April
2018
Published online:
28
April
2018
If dark matter is composed of massive bosons, a Bose–Einstein condensation process must have occurred during the cosmological evolution. Therefore galactic dark matter may be in a form of a condensate, characterized by a strong self-interaction. We consider the effects of rotation on the Bose–Einstein condensate dark matter halos, and we investigate how rotation might influence their astrophysical properties. In order to describe the condensate we use the Gross–Pitaevskii equation, and the Thomas–Fermi approximation, which predicts a polytropic equation of state with polytropic index 
. By assuming a rigid body rotation for the halo, with the use of the hydrodynamic representation of the Gross–Pitaevskii equation we obtain the basic equation describing the density distribution of the rotating condensate. We obtain the general solutions for the condensed dark matter density, and we derive the general representations for the mass distribution, boundary (radius), potential energy, velocity dispersion, tangential velocity and for the logarithmic density and velocity slopes, respectively. Explicit expressions for the radius, mass, and tangential velocity are obtained in the first order of approximation, under the assumption of slow rotation. In order to compare our results with the observations we fit the theoretical expressions of the tangential velocity of massive test particles moving in rotating Bose–Einstein condensate dark halos with the data of 12 dwarf galaxies and the Milky Way, respectively.
© The Author(s), 2018
