Related papers: Clumpy Cold Dark Matter and Biological Extinctions
The nature of cosmological dark matter finds its explanation in physics beyond the Standard model of elementary particles. The landscape of dark matter candidates contains a wide variety of species, either elusive or hardly detectable in…
Infall of cold dark matter on a galaxy may result in caustic rings where the particle density is enhanced. They may be searched for as features in the galactic rotation curves. Previous studies suggested the evidence for these caustic rings…
We revisit the question of whether the observed periodicity of comet impacts on Earth is consistent with Solar oscillation about the Galactic midplane and spiral arm crossings, here in the context of dissipative dark matter models. Consider…
Motivated by the presence of numerous dark matter clumps in the Milky Way's halo as expected from the cold dark matter cosmological model, we conduct numerical simulations to examine the heating of the disk. We construct an initial galaxy…
The detection of dark matter is central to particle physics and cosmology. Current fashionable supersymmetric models provide a dark matter candidate, the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP). When combined with fairly well understood…
Context. The analysis of observations of circumstellar disks around young stellar objects is often based on models with a smooth and continuous density distribution. However, spatially resolved observations with increasing angular…
We investigate if the fluctuations of the scalar field mediating quintessence -- the cosmon -- can play an important role in cosmology. Small fluctuations with short wavelength behave similar to a relativistic gas. In contrast, the…
In cold dark matter cosmological models, structures form and grow by merging of smaller units. Numerical simulations have shown that such merging is incomplete; the inner cores of halos survive and orbit as "subhalos" within their hosts.…
Optically thin dusty disks around Main Sequence stars consist of debris from catastrophic collisions or from low erosion of long-lived planetesimals. Resolved observations of dusty disks have systematically evidenced asymmetries and annular…
Cosmological arguments proving that the universe is dominated by invisible non-baryonic matter are reviewed. Possible physical candidates for dark matter particles are discussed. A particular attention is paid to non-compensated remnants of…
We present a new model for the formation of spherically symmetric clusters in an expanding Universe. Both the Universe and the collapsing cluster are governed by the same pressure less fluid equations for which a uniform initial density…
If the symmetry breaking leading to the origin of the axion dark matter field occurs after the end of inflation and is never restored, then overdensities in the axion field collapse to form dense objects known in the literature as axion…
The most compelling and popular models for dark matter predict that it should congregate and annihilate in stellar cores. Stars where annihilation contributes substantially to the total energy budget look very different to those with which…
The formation of structure in the Universe offers some of the most powerful evidence in favour of the existence of dark matter in the Universe. We summarize recent work by ourselves and our collaborators, using linear and quasi-linear…
Cosmic strings appear in many well-motivated extensions to the standard model of particle physics. If they exist, an abundant population of compact objects known as cosmic string loops permeate the Universe at all times, providing a…
One of the principal discoveries in modern cosmology is that standard model particles (including baryons, leptons and photons) together comprise only 5% of the mass-energy budget of the Universe. The remaining 95% consists of dark energy…
This review describes the evidence for small-scale structure, `clumping', in the radiation line-driven winds of hot, massive stars. In particular, we focus on examining to what extent simulations of the strong instability inherent to…
I propose a reinterpretation of cosmic dark matter in which a rigid network of cosmic strings formed at the end of inflation. The cosmic strings fulfill three functions: At recombination they provide an accretion mechanism for virializing…
The late infall of cold dark matter onto an isolated galaxy such as our own produces flows with definite velocity vectors at any physical point in the galactic halo. It also produces caustics which are places where the dark matter density…
Comet disintegration proceeds both through sublimation and discrete splitting events. The cross-sectional area of material ejected by a comet may, within days, become many times greater than that of the Earth, making encounters with such…