Related papers: Molecular dark matter in galaxies
Cold dark clouds are nearby members of the densest and coldest phase in the galactic interstellar medium, and represent the most accessible sites where stars like our Sun are currently being born. In this review we discuss recent progress…
There is strong evidence for a large fraction of dark matter in the Universe. Some of the evidence and candidates for dark matter are reviewed. Dark matter in spiral galaxies may be in the form of cold dense clouds of molecular hydrogen.…
Dark matter is a vital component of the current best model of our universe, $\Lambda$CDM. There are leading candidates for what the dark matter could be (e.g. weakly-interacting massive particles, or axions), but no compelling observational…
On galactic scales, the surface density of star formation appears to be well correlated with the surface density of molecular gas. This has lead many authors to suggest that there exists a causal relationship between the chemical state of…
A key prediction of the standard cosmological model -- which relies on the assumption that dark matter is cold, i.e. non-relativistic at the epoch of structure formation -- is the existence of a large number of dark matter substructures on…
Despite decades of direct and indirect searches within the Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) framework, no conclusive results have been found in the GeV--TeV range. This has motivated exploring alternatives, including new particles…
We explore whether observed molecular clouds could include a substantial population of unbound clouds. Using simulations which include only turbulence and gravity, we are able to match observed relations and naturally reproduce the observed…
In order to understand how molecular clouds form in the Galactic interstellar medium, we would like to be able to map the structure and kinematics of the gas flows responsible for forming them. However, doing so is observationally…
Dark stars are compact massive objects, described by Einstein gravitational field equations with matter. The type we consider possesses no event horizon, instead, there is a deep gravitational well with a very strong redshift factor.…
In the Milky Way and other main-sequence galaxies, stars form exclusively in molecular gas, which is traced by CO emission. However, low metallicity dwarf galaxies are often `CO-dark' in the sense that CO emission is not observable even at…
Giant molecular clouds (GMCs) are the primary reservoirs of cold, star-forming molecular gas in the Milky Way and similar galaxies, and thus any understanding of star formation must encompass a model for GMC formation, evolution, and…
Stars form in cold clouds of predominantly molecular (H2) gas. We are just beginning to understand how the formation, properties, and destruction of these clouds varies across the universe. In this chapter, we describe how the thermal line…
Several observational lines of evidence imply that a fraction of the dark matter in the Galaxy may be comprised of small cold clouds of molecular hydrogen. Such objects are difficult to detect because of their small size and low…
Transient microstructure in the diffuse interstellar medium has been observed towards galactic and extragalactic sources for decades, usually in lines of atoms and ions, and, more recently, in molecular lines. Evidently, there is a…
We show that the ionization of dense molecular clouds can be used to set strong constraints on dark matter models producing UV/X-ray photons in their annihilation or decay. We place robust and competitive constraints on various dark matter…
The first stars to form in the Universe may be powered by the annihilation of weakly interacting dark matter particles. These so-called dark stars, if observed, may give us a clue about the nature of dark matter. Here we examine which…
It appears that the majority of rapidly-, well-localized gamma-ray bursts with undetected, or dark, optical afterglows, or `dark bursts' for short, occur in clouds of size R > 10L_{49}^{1/2} pc and mass M > 3x10^5L_{49} M_{sun}, where L is…
The lack of tangible evidence for non-gravitational interactions between dark and visible sectors drives the need for exploring new avenues of inferring dark matter properties through purely gravitational probes. In particular, addressing…
The physical conditions in molecular clouds control the nature and rate of star formation, with consequences for planet formation and galaxy evolution. The focus of this review is on the conditions that characterize regions of star…
Molecular clouds are a fundamental ingredient of galaxies: they are the channels that transform the diffuse gas into stars. The detailed process of how they do it is not completely understood. We review the current knowledge of molecular…