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Title: Testing the Bose-Einstein Condensate dark matter model at galactic cluster scale

Journal Article · · Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
 [1]; ;  [2];  [3]
  1. Department of Mathematics, University College London, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT (United Kingdom)
  2. State Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Material and Technology, and Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Display Material and Technology, School of Physics and Engineering, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510275 (China)
  3. Astronomical Institute, Astronomical Observatory Cluj-Napoca, Romanian Academy, 15 Cire\csilor Street, 400487 Cluj-Napoca (Romania)

The possibility that dark matter may be in the form of a Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC) has been extensively explored at galactic scale. In particular, good fits for the galactic rotations curves have been obtained, and upper limits for the dark matter particle mass and scattering length have been estimated. In the present paper we extend the investigation of the properties of the BEC dark matter to the galactic cluster scale, involving dark matter dominated astrophysical systems formed of thousands of galaxies each. By considering that one of the major components of a galactic cluster, the intra-cluster hot gas, is described by King's β-model, and that both intra-cluster gas and dark matter are in hydrostatic equilibrium, bound by the same total mass profile, we derive the mass and density profiles of the BEC dark matter. In our analysis we consider several theoretical models, corresponding to isothermal hot gas and zero temperature BEC dark matter, non-isothermal gas and zero temperature dark matter, and isothermal gas and finite temperature BEC, respectively. The properties of the finite temperature BEC dark matter cluster are investigated in detail numerically. We compare our theoretical results with the observational data of 106 galactic clusters. Using a least-squares fitting, as well as the observational results for the dark matter self-interaction cross section, we obtain some upper bounds for the mass and scattering length of the dark matter particle. Our results suggest that the mass of the dark matter particle is of the order of μ eV, while the scattering length has values in the range of 10{sup −7} fm.

OSTI ID:
22525180
Journal Information:
Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Vol. 2015, Issue 11; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1475-7516
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English