2021/06/22 by Lingyuan Ji, Ji, Lingyuan
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO) #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #FOS: Physical sciences #General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2106.11971
openalex publication_date 2021/06/22 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We consider a model where a light scalar field (with mass \lesssim 30 \rm eV), conjectured to be dark matter, has a non-minimal coupling to gravity. In the non-relativistic limit, this new coupling introduces a self-interaction term in the scalar-field equation of motion, and modifies the source term for the gravitational field. Moreover, in the small-coupling limit justified by the observed dark-matter density, the system further reduces to the Gross-Pitaevskii-Poisson equations, which remarkably also arise from a self-gravitating and self-interacting Bose-Einstein condensate system. We derive predictions of our model on linear and non-linear structure formation by exploiting this unexpected connection.