Cosmic Filament Spin from Dark Matter Vortices

The recent observational evidence for cosmic filament spin on megaparsec scales (Wang et al, Nature Astronomy 5, 839-845 (2021)) demands an explanation in the physics of dark matter. Conventional collisionless cold particle dark matter is conjectured to generate cosmic filament spin through tidal torquing, but this explanation requires extrapolating from the quasi-linear regime to the non-linear regime. Meanwhile no alternative explanation exists in the context of ultra-light (e.g., axion) dark matter, and indeed these models would naively predict zero spin for cosmic filaments. In this Letter we study cosmic filament spin in theories of ultra-light dark matter, such as ultra-light axions, and bosonic and fermionic condensates, such as superfluids and superconductors. These models are distinguished from conventional particle dark matter models by the possibility of dark matter vortices. We take a model agnostic approach, and demonstrate that a collection of dark vortices can explain the data reported in Wang et al. Modeling a collection of vortices with a simple two-parameter analytic model, corresponding to an averaging of the velocity field, we find an excellent fit to the data. We perform a Markov Chain Monte Carlo analysis and find constraints on the number of vortices, the dark matter mass, and the radius of the inner core region where the vortices are distributed, in order for ultra-light dark matter to explain spinning cosmic filaments.