2016/03/21 by JiJi Fan, Fan, JiJi · 5 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA) #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO) #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #astro-ph.CO #astro-ph.GA #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1603.06580
minor modifications; references added
openalex publication_date 2016/03/21 · arxiv created 2016/04/15 · arxiv updated 2016/04/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Ultralight scalar dark matter with mass at or below the eV scale and pressure from repulsive self-interaction could form a Bose-Einstein condensate in the early Universe and maybe in galaxies as well. It has been suggested to be a possible solution to the cusp/core problem or even to explain MOND phenomenology. In this paper, I initiate a study of possible self-interactions of ultralight scalar dark matter from the particle physics point of view. To protect its mass, the scalar dark matter is identified as a pseudo Nambu-Goldstone boson (pNGB). Quite a few pNGB models with different potentials such as the QCD axion and the dilaton lead to attractive self-interactions. Yet if an axion is a remnant of a 5D gauged U(1) symmetry, its self-interactions could be repulsive provided the masses and charges of the 5D matter contributing to its potential satisfy certain constraints. Collective symmetry breaking could also lead to a repulsive self-interaction yet with too large a strength that is ruled out by Bullet Cluster constraints. I also discuss cosmological and astrophysical constraints on ultralight repulsive dark matter in terms of a parametrization motivated by particle physics considerations.