Impact of ultralight axion self-interactions on the large scale structure of the Universe

Ultralight axions have sparked attention because their tiny mass m∼10-22 eV, which leads to a kiloparsec-scale de Broglie wavelength comparable to the size of a dwarf galaxy, could alleviate the so-called small-scale crisis of massive cold dark matter (CDM) candidates. However, recent analyses of the Lyman-α forest power spectrum set a tight lower bound on their mass of m≳10-21 eV which makes them much less relevant from an astrophysical point of view. An important caveat to these numerical studies is that they do not take into account self-interactions among ultralight axions. Furthermore, for axions which acquired a mass through nonperturbative effects, this self-interaction is attractive and, therefore, could counteract the quantum "pressure" induced by the strong delocalization of the particles. In this work, we show that even a tiny attractive interaction among ultralight axions can have a significant impact on the stability of cosmic structures at low redshift. After a brief review of known results about solitons in the absence of gravity, we discuss the stability of filamentary and pancakelike solutions when quantum pressure, attractive interactions and gravity are present. The analysis based on 1 degree of freedom, namely the breathing mode, reveals that pancakes are stable, while filaments are unstable if the mass per unit length is larger than a critical value. However, we show that pancakes are unstable against transverse perturbations. We expect this to be true for halos and filaments as well. Instabilities driven by the breathing mode will not be seen in the low column density Lyman-α forest unless the axion decay constant is extremely small, f≲1013 GeV. Notwithstanding, axion solitonic cores could leave a detectable signature in the Lyman-α forest if the normalization of the unknown axion core - filament mass relation is ∼100 larger than it is for spherical halos. We hope our work motivates future numerical studies of the impact of axion self-interactions on cosmic structure formation.