First constraints on Fuzzy Dark Matter from the dynamics of stellar streams in the Milky Way

Abstract

We present a novel method to constrain the mass of ultra-light bosons as the dark matter using stellar streams formed by disrupting Globular Clusters in the Milky Way. The turbulent density field of Fuzzy Dark Matter (FDM) haloes results in perturbations and dynamical heating of thin streams. Using numerical simulations based on an effective model, we explore the magnitude of this phenomenon and show that this is observable for the range of axion masses $m_a$ that is interesting for alleviating the `small-scale problems' of $\Lambda$CDM. We derive an analytical model for the thickening of thin stellar streams and obtain an early conservative lower limit for the boson mass of $m_a > 1.5 \times 10^{-22}~$eV, using pre-Gaia literature data for six Milky Way streams and after marginalizing over physical parameters. This demonstrates the great promise for using this novel dynamical method as a fully independent probe of FDM, to complement results based on Lyman-$\alpha$ forest data.