Astrophysics (Index)About

fuzzy dark matter

(FDM, fuzzy cold dark matter, scalar field dark matter, wave dark matter)
(concept of extremely light dark matter particles)

Fuzzy dark matter (FDM or fuzzy cold dark matter) is a model of dark matter presuming it consists of particles with rest mass on the order of 10-22eV. This quality gives it a very long Compton wavelength, on the order of a light-year, which means that in addition to interacting with each other (and other matter) via gravity, they would interact via quantum-mechanical effects even at the distances between them within regions of high dark-matter density such as the centers of galaxies. The current favored dark-matter model, cold dark matter (CDM), has the problem that simulations produce more small-scale variation than is observed, and FDM has the potential to match CDM's successes without suffering from this problem, i.e., it has a smoothing effect at just the scale to smooth out the unrealistic small-scale variations seen in simulations.

The conceived mass is orders-of-magnitude below range of masses measured by experiment or current normal means of detecting masses, and far less than current estimates for known and theorized low-mass particles such as axions and neutrinos, which are generally thought to have masses greater than 10-5 eV. Though these are the favored estimates, the minimum-mass limits that have been determined are sufficiently close (within a couple of orders of magnitude) to 10-22 eV to allow some interest in FDM theories.

Dark matter particles with such a low mass would be more wave-like and would be best described by a quantum field theory (QFT). The terms wave dark matter and scalar field dark matter have also been used for the concept.


(astrophysics,dark matter,early universe,cosmology)
Further reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_cold_dark_matter
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2017PhRvD..95d3541H/abstract
https://chandra.harvard.edu/blog/node/642

Referenced by pages:
axion (A0)
core-cusp problem
cosmological model
dark matter (DM)
dynamical friction
repulsive dark matter (RDM)
Schrödinger-Poisson equation
sub-GeV dark matter

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