PIRSA:22090083

Dark Photon Stars

Hardy, E. (2022). Dark Photon Stars. Perimeter Institute. https://pirsa.org/22090083

Hardy, Edward. Dark Photon Stars. Perimeter Institute, Sep. 13, 2022, https://pirsa.org/22090083 

          @misc{ pirsa_PIRSA:22090083,
            doi = {10.48660/22090083},
            url = {https://pirsa.org/22090083},
            author = {Hardy, Edward},
            keywords = {Particle Physics},
            language = {en},
            title = {Dark Photon Stars},
            publisher = {Perimeter Institute},
            year = {2022},
            month = {sep},
            note = {PIRSA:22090083 see, \url{https://pirsa.org}}
          }

Edward Hardy University of Liverpool

DOI 10.48660/22090083
Collection
Talk Type Scientific Series
Subject

Abstract

I will argue that many theories in which dark matter is light (with a mass < eV) lead to theoretically and observationally interesting dark matter substructure. As a particular, calculable, example I will show that this is the case for a new vector boson with non-zero mass (a `dark photon') that is present during inflation, at which time a relic abundance is automatically produced from vacuum fluctuations.  Due to a remarkable coincidence between the size of the primordial density perturbations and the scale at which quantum pressure is relevant, a substantial fraction of the dark matter inevitably collapses into gravitationally bound solitons, which are fully quantum coherent objects. The central densities of these `dark photon star', or `Proca star', solitons are typically a factor 10^6 larger than the local background dark matter density today. I will also mention how similar substructure might occur in theories of post-inflationary axion-like-particles. 

Zoom Link:  https://pitp.zoom.us/j/94995778057?pwd=T2w4WWU0ZGtwWEIzTHFSZ3J6dGovUT09