English

Gravitationally bound BCS state as dark matter

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2017-04-13 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Phenomenology High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

We explore the possibility that fermionic dark matter undergoes a BCS transition to form a superfluid. This requires an attractive interaction between fermions and we describe a possible source of this interaction induced by torsion. We describe the gravitating fermion system with the Bogoliubov-de Gennes formalism in the local density approximation. We solve the Poisson equation along with the equations for the density and gap energy of the fermions to find a self-gravitating, superfluid solution for dark matter halos. In order to produce halos the size of dwarf galaxies, we require a particle mass of 200eV\sim 200\mathrm{eV}. We find a maximum attractive coupling strength before the halo becomes unstable. If dark matter halos do have a superfluid component, this raises the possibility that they contain vortex lines.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1607.08621,
  title  = {Gravitationally bound BCS state as dark matter},
  author = {Stephon Alexander and Sam Cormack},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1607.08621},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

16 pages, 3 figures, version accepted for publication in JCAP

R2 v1 2026-06-22T15:07:11.959Z