Crossing the dark matter soliton core: A possible reversed orbital precession

The ultralight dark matter (ULDM) model has become a popular dark matter scenario nowadays. The mass of the ULDM particles is extremely small so that they can exhibit wave properties in the central dark matter halo region. Numerical simulations show that a soliton core with an almost constant mass density would be formed inside the ULDM halo. If our Galactic Center has a dark matter soliton core, some of the stars orbiting about the supermassive black hole (Sgr A∗) would be crossing the soliton core boundary. In this article, we report the first theoretical study on how the dark matter soliton core near the Sgr A∗ could affect the surrounding stellar orbital precession. We show that some particular stellar orbital precession may become retrograde in direction, which is opposite to the prograde direction predicted by general relativity. We anticipate that future orbital data of the stars S2, S12 and S4716 can provide crucial tests for the ULDM model for m∼10⁻¹⁹ - 10⁻¹⁷ eV. Copyright © 2022 American Physical Society.