Related papers: Captured molecules could make a Bose star visible
We describe the setup to create a large Bose-Einstein condensate containing more than 120x10^6 atoms. In the experiment a thermal beam is slowed by a Zeeman slower and captured in a dark-spot magneto-optical trap (MOT). A typical dark-spot…
Molecules and dust are formed in and around the asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars and supernovae (SNe), and are ejected into the interstellar medium (ISM) through the stellar wind. The dust and gas contain elements newly synthesised in…
We investigate analytically whether in a close encounter with a star, a Dark Matter particle can be accelerated above the escape speed of a Globular Cluster and be ejected. We find that this mechanism is not sufficient to eject a massive,…
Stars form within molecular clouds but our understanding of this fundamental process remains hampered by the complexity of the physics that drives their evolution. We review our observational and theoretical knowledge of molecular clouds…
At the high densities and low temperatures found in star forming regions, all molecules other than H2 should stick on dust grains on timescales shorter than the cloud lifetimes. Yet these clouds are detected in the millimeter lines of…
We continue our work on a proposal for what dark matter could be, namely that the dark matter consists of essentially macroscopic objects built from ordinary matter. The only element of new physics is that there should exist several types…
Our current understanding of the physical processes of star formation is reviewed, with emphasis on processes occurring in molecular clouds like those observed nearby. The dense cores of these clouds are predicted to undergo gravitational…
We propose here the dark matter content of galaxies as a cold bosonic fluid composed of Weakly Interacting Slim Particles (WISPs), represented by spin-0 axion-like particles and spin-1 hidden bosons, thermalized in the Bose-Einstein…
The dense molecular cloud cores that form stars, like other self-gravitating objects, undergo bulk oscillations. Just at the point of gravitational instability, their fundamental oscillation mode has zero frequency. We study, using…
Several models of physics beyond the Standard Model predict the existence of new ultralight bosons. This thesis investigates a way to discover such particles through observations of gravitational waves from binary black holes. This is…
The winds of cool luminous AGB stars are commonly assumed to be driven by radiative acceleration of dust grains which form in the extended atmospheres produced by pulsation-induced shock waves. The dust particles gain momentum by absorption…
Bose-Einstein condensation, the macroscopic ground state accumulation of particles with integer spin (bosons) at low temperature and high density, has been observed in several physical systems, including cold atomic gases and solid state…
In regions where stars form, variations in density and temperature can cause gas to freeze-out onto dust grains forming ice mantles, which influences the chemical composition of a cloud. The aim of this paper is to understand in detail the…
A hierarchy of equations for equilibrium reduced density matrices obtained earlier is used to consider systems of spinless bosons bound by forces of gravity alone. The systems are assumed to be at absolute zero of temperature under…
Dust waves and bow waves result from the action of a star's radiation pressure on a stream of dusty plasma that flows past it. They are an alternative mechanism to hydrodynamic bow shocks for explaining the curved arcs of infrared emission…
Standard thermodynamical results of ideal Bose gases are used to study the possible formation of a cosmological Bose-Einstein condensate in Scalar Field Dark Matter models; the main hypothesis is that the boson particles were in thermal…
We make preliminary estimates to assess whether the recently reported flyby anomaly can be attributed to dark matter interactions. We consider both elastic and exothermic inelastic scattering from dark matter constituents; for isotropic…
The hypothesis of an `invisible' axion was made by Misha Shifman and others, approximately thirty years ago. It has turned out to be an unusually fruitful idea, crossing boundaries between particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology. An…
A new physical phenomenon is identified: volumetric stellar emission into gravitationally bound orbits of weakly coupled particles such as axions, moduli, hidden photons, and neutrinos. While only a tiny fraction of the instantaneous…
In many models, dark matter particles can elastically scatter with nuclei in planets, causing those particles to become gravitationally bound. While the energy expected to be released through the subsequent annihilations of dark matter…