Conveners
Not Really Quantum Cosmology: How far can we get by treating a dark matter halo like an atom?
- Luna Zagorac
- (Chair: Yuko Urakawa)
Description
In this talk, I will focus on the fuzzy region of ultralight dark matter (FDM/ULDM): an axion-like candidate which keeps the successes of cold dark matter on large scales but alleviates tensions on small scales. This small-scale behavior is due to characteristic observable cores in ULDM called solitons, which also correspond to the ground state of the equations governing ULDM. Thus, one promising avenue for studying ULDM dynamics is by treating individual halos as hydrogen atoms and calculating the full spectrum of their eigenstates, which are then linked to the qualitative behavior of the halo. In this talk, I will outline how and why this approach is useful, demonstrate some of its application, and describe first steps towards this approach from a single axion field into two species of axions on our way to exploring the axiverse.
