2001/11/30 by Rabindra N. Mohapatra, R. N. Mohapatra, S. Nussinov +2 · 98 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics #Baryonic dark matter #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Context (archaeology) #Cosmology #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Cuspy halo problem #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Dark matter #Dark matter halo #Galaxy #Halo #Hot dark matter #Light dark matter #Physics #Scalar field dark matter #Warm dark matter #astro-ph #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.66.063002
published in Physical review. D. Particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology/Physical review. D. Particles and fields 66(6) (American Physical Society) · 6 pages; some references added
arxiv created 2001/12/07 · openalex publication_date 2002/09/10 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
It has been argued that the observed core density profile of galaxies is inconsistent with having a dark matter particle that is collisionless and that alternative dark matter candidates which are self-interacting may explain observations better. One new class of self-interacting dark matter that has been proposed in the context of mirror universe models of particle physics is the mirror hydrogen atom, whose stability is guaranteed by the conservation of mirror baryon number. We show that the effective transport cross section for mirror hydrogen atoms has the right order of magnitude for solving the ``cuspy'' halo problem. Furthermore, the suppression of dissipation effects for mirror atoms due to a higher mirror mass scale prevents the mirror halo matter from collapsing into a disk, strengthening the argument for mirror matter as galactic dark matter.