Scalar field effects on the orbit of S2 star
astro-ph.GA
/ Authors
António Amorim, Michael Bauböck, Myriam Benisty, Jean-Philippe Berger, Yann Clénet, Vincent Coude du Foresto, Tim de Zeeuw, Jason Dexter, Andreas Eckart, Frank Eisenhauer
and 28 more authors
Miguel C. Ferreira, Feng Gao, Paulo J. V. Garcia, Eric Gendron, Reinhard Genzel, Stefan Gillessen, Paulo Gordo, Maryam Habibi, Matthew Horrobin, Alejandra Jiménez-Rosales, Pierre Kervella, Sylvestre Lacour, Jean-Baptiste Le Bouquin, Pierre Lena, Thomas Ott, Thibaut Paumard, Karine Perraut, Guy Perrin, Oliver Pfuhl, Gustavo Rodríguez-Coira, Gerard Rousset, Odele Straub,
/ Abstract
Precise measurements of the S-stars orbiting SgrA* have set strong constraints on the nature of the compact object at the centre of the Milky Way. The presence of a black hole in that region is well established, but its neighboring environment is still an open debate. In that respect, the existence of dark matter in that central region may be detectable due to its strong signatures on the orbits of stars: the main effect is a Newtonian precession which will affect the overall pericentre shift of S2, the latter being a target measurement of the GRAVITY instrument. The exact nature of this dark matter (e.g., stellar dark remnants or diffuse dark matter) is unknown. This article assumes it to be an scalar field of toroidal distribution, associated with ultra-light dark matter particles, surrounding the Kerr black hole. Such a field is a form of "hair" expected in the context of superradiance, a mechanism that extracts rotational energy from the black hole. Orbital signatures for the S2 star are computed and shown to be detectable by GRAVITY. The scalar field can be constrained because the variation of orbital elements depends both on the relative mass of the scalar field to the black hole and on the field mass coupling parameter.