“Bozon clouds” may explain the dark matter

by time news

In this article the authors argue that dark matter can be composed of particles called scleral bosons. Higgs boson is a scalar boson but because of its mass it is not a candidate to constitute the dark matter

Illustration of a quark core in a neutron star. Credit: Jyrki Hokkanen, CSC

The nature of dark matter continues to be a mystery to astronomers and physicists. The search for particles of dark matter does not yet yield results and it is tempting to give up the dark matter model altogether, but the indirect evidence that it exists continues to be solid. So what is it? One team has an idea, and they published the results of their first study.

The properties of dark matter preclude the possibility that it is “ordinary” matter (such as appears in the standard model), because ordinary matter (atoms, molecules, etc.) absorbs and emits light easily. Even if dark matter were clouds of molecules so cold that they emit almost no light, they would still be seen through the light they absorb, like dark nebulae commonly seen near the plane of the galaxy. But there are not enough of them to explain the effects of the dark matter we observe. We also sculpted neutrino particles that do not have a strong interaction with light, but neutrinos are a form of “hot” dark matter because they move at a speed close to the speed of light. We know that most dark matter must be slow, meaning “cold”, so if there is dark matter in the universe it must be something else.

Elementary Particle Table: Quarks and leptons are fermions, while power carriers are bosons.  Credit: Fermilab
Elementary Particle Table: Quarks and leptons are fermions, while power carriers are bosons. Credit: Fermilab

In this article the authors argue that dark matter can be composed of particles called scleral bosons. All known material can be attributed to two major categories called fermions and bosons. The affiliation of a particle to a category depends on a quantum property called a spin. Freemasons such as electrons and quarks have a vertigo that is a broken number like 1/2 or 3/2, bosons such as photons have a vertigo that is an integer, for example 1 or 0. Any particle with a vertigo of 0 is a scalar boson.

This seems like a trivial difference, but the two types of particles behave very differently when grouped into large groups. Fermions can never be in the same quantum state, so if you try to cram them together, they push back. This is why white dwarfs and neutron stars exist. Gravity tries to push electrons or neutrons together, but the Fermi pressure is so strong that it can resist gravity (up to a certain point). Bosons, on the other hand, have no problem being in the same situation. So if you refrigerate a lot of bosons (like helium-4) they can work out a strange quantum object called Boz-Einstein condensation.

The only scalar boson known is the Higgs boson. Higgs may not be a dark substance because of its known properties, but there are theories that suggest other scalar bosons. These will not have a strong interaction with light, only with gravity. Since light cannot heat them significantly, over time these scalar bosons will cool down and collapse into large clouds. So maybe the dark matter is made of large scattered clouds of scalar bosons.

To the scientific paper

For review at Universe Today

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