Is dark matter a BEC or scalar field?

This is a brief review on the history of the Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) or boson star model of galactic dark matter halos, where ultra-light scalar dark matter particles condense in a single BEC quantum state. The halos can be described as a self-gravitating, possibly self-interacting, coherent scalar field. On a scale larger than galaxies, dark matter behaves like cold dark matter while below that scale the quantum mechanical nature suppresses the dark matter structure formation due to the minimum length scale determined by the mass m\st{>}{\sim}10^{-24} eV and the self-interaction of the particles. This property could alleviate the cusp problem and missing satellite problems of the $\Lambda$CDM model. Furthermore, this model well reproduces the observed rotation curves of spiral and dwarf galaxies, which makes the model promising.Comment: published versio

Brief History of Ultra-light Scalar Dark Matter Models

This is a review on the brief history of the scalar field dark matter model also known as fuzzy dark matter, BEC dark matter, wave dark matter, or ultra-light axion. In this model ultra-light scalar dark matter particles with mass $m = O(10^{-22})eV$ condense in a single Bose-Einstein condensate state and behave collectively like a classical wave. Galactic dark matter halos can be described as a self-gravitating coherent scalar field configuration called boson stars. At the scale larger than galaxies the dark matter acts like cold dark matter, while below the scale quantum pressure from the uncertainty principle suppresses the smaller structure formation so that it can resolve the small scale crisis of the conventional cold dark matter model.Comment: 5 page

Fermion Scattering at a Phase Wave

We study fermion reflection at a phase wave which is formed during a bubble collision in a first order phase transition. We calculate the reflection and the transmission coefficients by solving the Dirac equation with the phase wave background. Using the results we analyze the damping and the velocity of the wave.Comment: 19 pages. Standard Latex file with 2 tex figure