Dark Matter Halos as Bose-Einstein Condensates

Abstract

Galactic dark matter is modelled by a scalar field in order to effectively modify Kepler's law without changing standard Newtonian gravity. In particular, a solvable toy model with a self-interaction U(Phi) borrowed from non-topological solitons produces already qualitatively correct rotation curves and scaling relations. Although relativistic effects in the halo are very small, we indicate corrections arising from the general relativistic formulation. Thereby, we can also probe the weak gravitational lensing of our soliton type halo. For cold scalar fields, it corresponds to a gravitationally confined Boson-Einstein condensate, but of galactic dimensions.