Haverford College

"New Phenomena in Ultralight Dark Matter"

Talk by Nathan Musoke

Thursday, January 26 

4:30 pm in Hilles 109

Abstract: I will discuss ultralight dark matter (ULDM), an alternative to cold dark matter (CDM) that has attracted much recent attention.  While ULDM's large scale structure is similar to CDM, it differs on small scales.  I will introduce and motivate dark matter, then introduce ultralight dark matter and its unique signatures. I will finish by presenting two new explorations of structure formation in ULDM:

1. Self-interactions in ULDM affect the efficiency with which small dark matter halos are tidally stripped.

2. Rotation in ULDM can manifest as vortices.  These vortices are generically unstable, but gravitational effects from supermassive black holes may cause them to persist indefinitely.