Letter | Published:

Cosmic structure as the quantum interference of a coherent dark wave

Nature Physics 10, 496–499 (2014) | Download Citation

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Abstract

The conventional cold-particle interpretation of dark matter (known as ‘cold dark matter’, or CDM) still lacks laboratory support and struggles with the basic properties of common dwarf galaxies, which have surprisingly uniform central masses and shallow density profiles1,2,3,4,5. In contrast, galaxies predicted by CDM extend to much lower masses, with steeper, singular profiles6,7,8,9. This tension motivates cold, wavelike dark matter (ψDM) composed of a non-relativistic Bose–Einstein condensate, so the uncertainty principle counters gravity below a Jeans scale10,11,12. Here we achieve cosmological simulations of this quantum state at unprecedentedly high resolution capable of resolving dwarf galaxies, with only one free parameter, mB, the boson mass. We demonstrate the large-scale structure is indistinguishable from CDM, as desired, but differs radically inside galaxies where quantum interference forms solitonic cores surrounded by extended haloes of fluctuating density granules. These results allow us to determine eV using stellar phase-space distributions in dwarf spheroidal galaxies. Denser, more massive solitons are predicted for Milky Way sized galaxies, providing a substantial seed to help explain early spheroid formation. The onset of galaxy formation is substantially delayed relative to CDM, appearing at redshift z ≲ 13 in our simulations.

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Acknowledgements

We thank T-P. Woo for calculating the soliton solution and M-H. Liao for helping conduct the simulations. We acknowledge Chipbond Technology Corporation for donating the GPU cluster with which this work was conducted. This work is supported in part by the National Science Council of Taiwan under grants NSC100-2112-M-002-018-MY3 and NSC99-2112-M-002-009-MY3.

Author information

Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, National Taiwan University, No. 1, Sec. 4, Roosevelt Road Taipei, 10617, Taiwan

    • Hsi-Yu Schive
    •  & Tzihong Chiueh

  2. Center for Theoretical Sciences, National Taiwan University, Taipei 10617, Taiwan

    • Tzihong Chiueh

  3. Department of Theoretical Physics, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, E-48080 Bilbao, Spain

    • Tom Broadhurst

  4. Ikerbasque, Basque Foundation for Science, E-48011 Bilbao, Spain

    • Tom Broadhurst

Authors

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Contributions

Each author has contributed significantly to this paper. In particular, T.C. conceived and supervised the project, H-Y.S. developed the code and conducted the simulations, the results of which have been linked by T.B. to the observations.

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tzihong Chiueh.

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https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys2996

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