nLab fuzzy dark matter

Contents

Context

Physics

Fields and quanta

fields and particles in particle physics

and in the standard model of particle physics:

force field gauge bosons

photon - electromagnetic field (abelian Yang-Mills field)
W, Z, B-boson - electroweak field (Yang-Mills field)
gluon - strong nuclear force (Yang-Mills field)
graviton - field of gravity
infraparticle

scalar bosons

Higgs boson, inflaton (scalar field)

matter field fermions (spinors, Dirac fields)

flavors of fundamental fermions in the standard model of particle physics:
generation of fermions	1st generation	2nd generation	3d generation
quarks ( $q$ )
up-type	up quark ( $u$ )	charm quark ( $c$ )	top quark ( $t$ )
down-type	down quark ( $d$ )	strange quark ( $s$ )	bottom quark ( $b$ )
leptons
charged	electron	muon	tauon
neutral	electron neutrino	muon neutrino	tau neutrino

bound states:
mesons	light mesons: pion ( $u d$ ) ρ-meson ( $u d$ ) ω-meson ( $u d$ ) f1-meson a1-meson	strange-mesons: ϕ-meson ( $s \bar s$ ), kaon, K-meson ( $u s$ , $d s$ ) eta-meson ( $u u + d d + s s$ ) charmed heavy mesons*: D-meson ( $u c$ , $d c$ , $s c$ ) J/ψ-meson ( $c \bar c$ )	bottom heavy mesons: B-meson ( $q b$ ) ϒ-meson ( $b \bar b$ )
baryons	nucleons: proton $(u u d)$ neutron $(u d d)$

(also: antiparticles)

effective particles

Goldstone bosons

hadrons (bound states of the above quarks)

meson
- scalar meson
  - σ-meson
  - pion
  - kaon
  - D-meson
  - B-meson
- vector meson
  - ω-meson
  - ρ-meson
  - f1-meson
  - a1-meson
  - b1-meson
  - h1-meson
  - K*-meson
- tensor meson
- quarkonium
  - charmonium
  - ϒ-meson
exotic meson
- XYZ meson
- tetraquark
baryon
- nucleon
  - proton
  - neutron
  - chemical element
    - carbon
    - nitrogen
- Lambda baryon
- pentaquark

solitons

in grand unified theory

minimally extended supersymmetric standard model

superpartners

bosinos:

gravitino - field of supergravity (Rarita-Schwinger field)
gaugino - super Yang-Mills field
gluino

sfermions:

squark

dark matter candidates

WIMP
axion

Exotica

auxiliary fields

Idea
References

General
Superfluid dark matter
MOND Phenomenology
Comparison and tension with experiment

Idea

A model for dark matter made up of massive but extremely light particles, whose de Broglie wavelength is at the scale of galaxies.

The idea is that on scales above that of galaxies, the predictions of fuzzy dark matter agree with the standard cold dark matter models that work exceptionally well on cosmological scales, while on scales of the size of galaxies the quantum properties of these light particles become relevant and change their effect just so as to fix the problems (see also MOND) that standard cold dark matter models have on these scales.

A natural candidate for such ultra-light particles are axions.

This kind of model was brought up independently by several groups of authors (see Lee 17 for historical survey) with early precursors going back as far as (Baldeschi-Gelmini-Ruffini 83), and accordingly goes by a number of different names, including the following:

Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) dark matter (Sin 92, Sikivie-Yang 09)
superfluid dark matter (Berezhiani-Khoury 15, Khoury 16)
fuzzy dark matter (Wu-Barkana-Gruzinov 00)
ultra-light axion (Erken-Sikivie-Tam-Yang 12)
wave dark matter
repulsive dark matter

and more.

The suggestion that fuzzy dark matter induces the observed almost-flat galactic rotation curves (“MOND”) seems to go back to (Sin 92). Further pointers are in (Lee 17, p. 3):

There are many works explaining the rotation curves of dwarf [17, 23, 69], and large galaxies [29, 43, 70–78] in this model.

More recently, detection of the 21cm hydrogen line from cosmic dawn indicates that star formation set in earlier than compatible with fuzzy dark matter models (Nebrin 17, Nebrin-Ghara-Mellema 18). This would rule out substantial contributions of fuzzy dark matter.

References

General

Early precursors of the idea include

M. R. Baldeschi, G. B. Gelmini, and R. Ruffini, Physics Letters B 122, 221 (1983).

The role of the Bose-Einstein condensate of axions on galactic scales was considered in

Sang-Jin Sin, Late time Cosmological Phase Transition and Galactic Halo as Bose-liquid, Phys.Rev.D50:3650-3654,1994 (arXiv:hep-ph/9205208)
Pierre Sikivie, Q. Yang, Bose-Einstein Condensation of Dark Matter Axions, Phys.Rev.Lett.103:111301, 2009 (arXiv:0901.1106)
O. Erken, Pierre Sikivie, H. Tam, Q. Yang, Cosmic axion thermalization, Phys. Rev. D 85, 063520 2012 (arXiv:1111.1157)

The proposal in the guise of “fuzzy dark matter” is originally due to

Wayne Hu, Rennan Barkana, Andrei Gruzinov, Cold and Fuzzy Dark Matter, Phys.Rev.Lett. 85 (2000) 1158-1161 (arXiv:astro-ph/0003365)

A detailed discussion is in

Lam Hui, Jeremiah Ostriker, Scott Tremaine, Edward Witten, On the hypothesis that cosmological dark matter is composed of ultra-light bosons, Phys. Rev. D 95, 043541 (2017) (arXiv:1610.08297)

Review includes

David J. E. Marsh, Axion Cosmology (arXiv:1510.07633)
Jae-Weon Lee, Brief History of Ultra-light Scalar Dark Matter Models (arXiv:1704.05057)

Computer simulation of structure formation with fuzzy dark matter:

Philip Mocz et al., First Star-Forming Structures in Fuzzy Cosmic Filaments, Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 141301 – 2019 (doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.141301)

Some thoughts on the quantum measurement problem for fuzzy DM particles with huge macroscopic Compton wavelengths? is in

Adam D. Helfer, Quantum measurement and fuzzy dark matter (arXiv:1809.04946)

Superfluid dark matter

Discussion of superfluid dark matter could be found in:

Sabine Hossenfelder, Tobias Mistele, Strong lensing with superfluid dark matter. Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Volume 2019, February 2019. (doi:10.1088/1475-7516/2019/02/001, arXiv:1809.00840)
Tobias Mistele, Stacy McGaugh, Sabine Hossenfelder, Galactic mass-to-light ratios with superfluid dark matter, Astronomy and Astrophysics, Volume 664, Article 40, August 2022 (doi:10.1051/0004-6361/202243216, arXiv:2201.07282)

MOND Phenomenology

Discussion of how superfluid aspects of axionic fuzzy dark matter reproduce MOND phenomenology is in

Lasha Berezhiani, Justin Khoury, Theory of Dark Matter Superfluidity, Phys. Rev. D 92, 103510 (2015) (arXiv:1507.01019)
Justin Khoury, Another Path for the Emergence of Modified Galactic Dynamics from Dark Matter Superfluidity, Phys. Rev. D 93, 103533 (2016) (arXiv:1602.05961)
JiJi Fan, Ultralight Repulsive Dark Matter and BEC (arXiv:1603.06580)
Andrea Addazi, Antonino Marciano, UV completion of a theory of Superfluid Dark Matter (arXiv:1801.04083)
Justin Khoury, Dark Matter Superfluidity (arXiv:2109.10928)

Comparison and tension with experiment

Comparison to experiment (observation):

Bohua Li, Tanja Rindler-Daller, and Paul R. Shapiro, Cosmological constraints on Bose-Einstein-condensed scalar field dark matter, Phys. Rev. D 89, 083536, 2014 (arXiv:1310.6061)
Hsi-Yu Schive, Tzihong Chiueh, Tom Broadhurst, Cosmic structure as the quantum interference of a coherent dark wave, Nature Physics 10, 496–499 (2014) (doi:10.1038/nphys2996)
Nilanjan Banik, Adam J. Christopherson, Pierre Sikivie, Elisa Maria Todarello, New astrophysical bounds on ultralight axionlike particles, Phys. Rev. D 95, 043542 (2017) (arXiv:1701.04573)

Strong constraints on fuzzy dark matter from observation of the cosmic 21cm hydrogen line are claimed and discussed in

Adam Lidz, Lam Hui, The Implications of a Pre-reionization 21 cm Absorption Signal for Fuzzy Dark Matter, Phys. Rev. D 98, 023011 (2018) (arXiv:1805.01253)
Olof Nebrin, Cosmic Dawn in a Fuzzy Universe: Constraining the nature of Dark Matterwith 21 cm Cosmology, Stockholm 2017 (diva2:1195402, urn:nbn:se:su:diva-154861)
Olof Nebrin, Raghunath Ghara, Garrelt Mellema, Fuzzy Dark Matter at Cosmic Dawn: New 21-cm Constraints (arXiv:1812.09760, reddit)

Claim that the galaxy core-cusp problem is not resolved after all is discussed in

Heling Deng, Mark P. Hertzberg, Mohammad Hossein Namjoo, Ali Masoumi, Can Light Dark Matter Solve the Core-Cusp Problem? (arXiv:1804.05921)

Claim that the fitting of the galaxy rotation curves is not resolved after all:

Mariangela Lisanti, Matthew Moschella, Nadav Joseph Outmezguine, Oren Slone, The Inconsistency of Superfluid Dark Matter with Milky Way Dynamics (arXiv:1911.12365)

Claim that superfluid dark matter is in tension with weak gravitational lensing data:

Tobias Mistele, Stacy McGaugh, Sabine Hossenfelder, Superfluid dark matter in tension with weak gravitational lensing data (arXiv:2303.08560)

Last revised on March 25, 2023 at 19:08:32. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.