Dark matter mounds from the collapse of supermassive stars: a general-relativistic analysis

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Caiozzo, Roberto, Bertone, Gianfranco, Ullio, Piero, Vicente, Rodrigo, Kavanagh, Bradley J., Gaggero, Daniele
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Caiozzo, Roberto
Bertone, Gianfranco
Ullio, Piero
Vicente, Rodrigo
Kavanagh, Bradley J.
Gaggero, Daniele
author_facet Caiozzo, Roberto
Bertone, Gianfranco
Ullio, Piero
Vicente, Rodrigo
Kavanagh, Bradley J.
Gaggero, Daniele
contents Recent work has highlighted the importance of a fully relativistic treatment of the dephasing of gravitational waves induced by dark-matter overdensities in extreme mass-ratio inspirals (EMRIs). However, a general-relativistic description of the dark matter phase-space distribution is currently available only for the case of a dark matter "spike" arising from adiabatic black hole growth. Here we develop a fully general-relativistic formalism for the more realistic scenario in which a supermassive stellar progenitor collapses to a black hole and produces a shallower dark matter overdensity, or "mound". We follow self-consistently the evolution of the supermassive star, its collapse, and the subsequent growth of the resulting black hole, together with the collisionless dark matter orbits. We find that in the regime where the collapse becomes non-adiabatic, the dark matter distribution function is significantly reshaped, with a clear depletion in the low-binding-energy region of phase space. Our results provide a more realistic prediction for the dark matter phase-space distribution around supermassive black holes, which is an essential step in our programme to use future EMRI observations to extract information about both the nature of dark matter and the formation history of the black hole.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_09985
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Dark matter mounds from the collapse of supermassive stars: a general-relativistic analysis
Caiozzo, Roberto
Bertone, Gianfranco
Ullio, Piero
Vicente, Rodrigo
Kavanagh, Bradley J.
Gaggero, Daniele
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
Recent work has highlighted the importance of a fully relativistic treatment of the dephasing of gravitational waves induced by dark-matter overdensities in extreme mass-ratio inspirals (EMRIs). However, a general-relativistic description of the dark matter phase-space distribution is currently available only for the case of a dark matter "spike" arising from adiabatic black hole growth. Here we develop a fully general-relativistic formalism for the more realistic scenario in which a supermassive stellar progenitor collapses to a black hole and produces a shallower dark matter overdensity, or "mound". We follow self-consistently the evolution of the supermassive star, its collapse, and the subsequent growth of the resulting black hole, together with the collisionless dark matter orbits. We find that in the regime where the collapse becomes non-adiabatic, the dark matter distribution function is significantly reshaped, with a clear depletion in the low-binding-energy region of phase space. Our results provide a more realistic prediction for the dark matter phase-space distribution around supermassive black holes, which is an essential step in our programme to use future EMRI observations to extract information about both the nature of dark matter and the formation history of the black hole.
title Dark matter mounds from the collapse of supermassive stars: a general-relativistic analysis
topic General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.09985