Gravitational waves as a new probe of Bose–Einstein condensate Dark Matter

2016/09/30 by P. S. Bhupal Dev, M. Lindner, Manfred Lindner +1 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics #Bose–Einstein condensate #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Dark matter #Galaxy #Gravitational wave #Halo #Matter wave #Observable #Parameter space #Physics #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Quantum #Quantum mechanics #Sensitivity (control systems) #Universe #astro-ph.CO #gr-qc #hep-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2017.08.043

8 pages, 1 figure; minor changes, version published in Phys. Lett. B

openalex publication_date 2017/08/23 · arxiv created 2017/09/01 · arxiv updated 2017/09/04 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

There exists a class of ultralight Dark Matter (DM) models which could give rise to a Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) in the early universe and behave as a single coherent wave instead of individual particles in galaxies. We show that a generic BEC-DM halo intervening along the line of sight of a gravitational wave (GW) signal could induce an observable change in the speed of GWs, with the effective refractive index depending only on the mass and self-interaction of the constituent DM particles and the GW frequency. Hence, we propose to use the deviation in the speed of GWs as a new probe of the BEC-DM parameter space. With a multi-messenger approach to GW astronomy and/or with extended sensitivity to lower GW frequencies, the entire BEC-DM parameter space can be effectively probed by our new method in the near future.

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• Real scalar field, the nonrelativistic limit, and the cosmological expansion