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Influence of tides and self-gravity on ultralight dark matter bounds from dwarf galaxies

Andrea Caputo1,2,3,* and Luca Teodori4,5,†

  • *Contact author: andrea.caputo@cern.ch
  • †Contact author: luca.teodori@iac.es
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Phys. Rev. D 114, 063013 – Published 8 September, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/73g2-21l7

Abstract

Dwarf spheroidal galaxies provide some of the most sensitive astrophysical probes of ultralight dark matter (ULDM), but the inferred constraints can be affected by two important systematics: tidal interactions with the Milky Way, which reduce ULDM-induced dynamical heating, and stellar self-gravity, which can become relevant if the stellar component was more compact at earlier times. In this work, we attempt to estimate both effects by reconstructing dwarf-galaxy orbital histories in a Milky Way potential, adopting a simple and approximate tidal-susceptibility diagnostic that we argue provides a conservative description of tidal stripping, and explicitly including stellar self-gravity in our numerical simulations. Within our framework, which we apply to five different dwarf galaxies, we find that ULDM with masses 5×10−22≲m/eV≲5×10−21 remains in tension with current data.

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Phys. Rev. D 114, 063013– Published 8 September, 2026
  • Received 7 April 2026
  • Accepted 30 July 2026
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