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What do you think of the possibility of 'dark sector' interactions?[1] The idea that dark matter might consist of a class of self-interacting particles, and th

What do you think of the possibility of 'dark sector' interactions?[1] The idea that dark matter might consist of a class of self-interacting particles, and that we might be embedded in a universe full of hidden phenomena as rich as the ordinary-matter phenomena that are visible to us (e.g. dark 'planets', dark 'stars', dark 'galaxies', or something very different) was always intriguing to me, but it seems that a consensus is emerging, based on observations of large-scale distribution, that dark matter is dominated by a single type of particle incapable of self-interaction. Is it still possible that some fraction of the dark matter in the universe is self-interacting, capable of 'clumping' and exhibiting physics similar to ordinary condensed matter, or are all the indications now pointing strongly towards a single non self-interacting particle? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_photon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_photon

raattgift 8y ago
> What do you think of the possibility of 'dark sector' interactions? It remains a possibility. It does not seem to be required by observation, though. Worse, if you move away from parsimonious non-interacting quantum field theories to more complex models, you have to suppress a lot of symmetries that inevitably produce observables which are not seen. Most people working with general relativity just use non-interacting scalar fields, but specific ideas about dark matter have to consider the ins and outs of gauge theory (e.g. does DM only feel gravitons and Higgs or does it also feel one or more of the other non-photon gauge bosons? if it feels the weak force, what goes on at electroweak scales? and so on...). The microscopic details of the microscopic alternatives within the broad family of QFT dark matter get hairy quickly, and there's very little astrophysical evidence to prefer one over the other (people favour axions or sterile neutrinos for reasons from within particle physics, and are looking for such things to complete their extensions to the standard model, they have to be very weakly interacting for particle-physics-in-laboratories reasons, but oh by the way as a side effect dark matter could be wholly or at least partially these proposed standard-model-problem-slaying particles). > [what if we propose dark photons, dark atoms, etc.?] One problem you run into is that if you can form composite dark particles analogous to atoms, or dark molecules, what prevents them from forming larger structures that collapse gravitationally? Likewise, if you can emit dark photons, you're removing momentum-energy from a particle in an orbit, and you would then expect the particle to fall into a closer orbit. Again, how do you prevent gravitational collapse? You might fix that by feeding back (squash DM together in galactic cores, release enormous "dark shine" dark-photon-analogues which then kick the massive DM particles into wider orbits, but it's like balancing a pencil on its tip; this is called DMAF (dark matter annihilation feedback), and is speculative. On the other hand baryon-flow feedback is a thing in solving e.g. the core/cusp density problem in particle dark matter, and that's a lot less speculative, because we know things like galactic jets are practically mandatory. You're generally stuck with appealing to rareness, which is in conflict with Copernican principles which work really remarkably well in cosmology (and astrophysics too), or slowing down dark chemistry so much that it basically doesn't have to enter into equations anyway. Carroll blogged about this a decade (!) ago (how to feel old: remember reading his cosmic variance blogpostings and making the discovery, pardon the pun, of how many years it's been since he stopped blogging there...) here : http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2008/10/29/dark-photons/ http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2008/10/29/dark-pho... In astrophysics instead of using base-ten for enumerating interesting things in the sky, the counting system goes roughly: forbidden-everywhere, unique, mandatory-everywhere. If you introduce dark matter stars, you would expect there to be so many of them that you could not miss the Einstein lenses they generate. (Similar to MACHO hunting). Dark matter galaxies, being much more massive, would be even harder to miss. You will struggle to find a deep-field image that isn't filled with background galaxies (or clusters) lensing even more background ones. If there are dark galaxies, surely they would be in the foreground of some of the visible galaxies -- otherwise what prevents that? Finally, we do have some gravitational structuring of dark matter; the standard description of structure formation requires it, and it's hard to get the late-time structures we see without dark matter filaments. There's undoubtedly some meat on the Structure Formation wikipedia page and the things it links to, but a briefer and simpler overview is in the last three paragraphs at http://sci.esa.int/planck/51560-the-history-of-structure-formation-in-the-universe/ http://sci.esa.int/planck/51560-the-history-of-structure-for...
- JProthero 8y ago
  This is exactly the comprehensive reply I was hoping for, thanks. I dug up a Carroll post on the arrow of time and the big bang for this thread which turned out to be from 2004, so I know the feeling. If there are any other non-experts like me this far down this reply chain who are interested in dark sector speculation, in addition to raattgift's excellent links I'd recommend the Wikipedia page on the Lightest Supersymmetric Particle [1] and Rob Reid's recent podcast with dark matter researcher Priya Natarajan [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightest_supersymmetric_particle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightest_supersymmetric_partic... [2] https://after-on.com/episodes-31-60/036 https://after-on.com/episodes-31-60/036

raattgift 8y ago

> What do you think of the possibility of 'dark sector' interactions? It remains a possibility. It does not seem to be required by observation, though. Worse, if you move away from parsimonious non-interacting quantum field theories to more complex models, you have to suppress a lot of symmetries that inevitably produce observables which are not seen. Most people working with general relativity just use non-interacting scalar fields, but specific ideas about dark matter have to consider the ins and outs of gauge theory (e.g. does DM only feel gravitons and Higgs or does it also feel one or more of the other non-photon gauge bosons? if it feels the weak force, what goes on at electroweak scales? and so on...). The microscopic details of the microscopic alternatives within the broad family of QFT dark matter get hairy quickly, and there's very little astrophysical evidence to prefer one over the other (people favour axions or sterile neutrinos for reasons from within particle physics, and are looking for such things to complete their extensions to the standard model, they have to be very weakly interacting for particle-physics-in-laboratories reasons, but oh by the way as a side effect dark matter could be wholly or at least partially these proposed standard-model-problem-slaying particles). > [what if we propose dark photons, dark atoms, etc.?] One problem you run into is that if you can form composite dark particles analogous to atoms, or dark molecules, what prevents them from forming larger structures that collapse gravitationally? Likewise, if you can emit dark photons, you're removing momentum-energy from a particle in an orbit, and you would then expect the particle to fall into a closer orbit. Again, how do you prevent gravitational collapse? You might fix that by feeding back (squash DM together in galactic cores, release enormous "dark shine" dark-photon-analogues which then kick the massive DM particles into wider orbits, but it's like balancing a pencil on its tip; this is called DMAF (dark matter annihilation feedback), and is speculative. On the other hand baryon-flow feedback is a thing in solving e.g. the core/cusp density problem in particle dark matter, and that's a lot less speculative, because we know things like galactic jets are practically mandatory. You're generally stuck with appealing to rareness, which is in conflict with Copernican principles which work really remarkably well in cosmology (and astrophysics too), or slowing down dark chemistry so much that it basically doesn't have to enter into equations anyway. Carroll blogged about this a decade (!) ago (how to feel old: remember reading his cosmic variance blogpostings and making the discovery, pardon the pun, of how many years it's been since he stopped blogging there...) here : http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2008/10/29/dark-photons/ http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2008/10/29/dark-pho... In astrophysics instead of using base-ten for enumerating interesting things in the sky, the counting system goes roughly: forbidden-everywhere, unique, mandatory-everywhere. If you introduce dark matter stars, you would expect there to be so many of them that you could not miss the Einstein lenses they generate. (Similar to MACHO hunting). Dark matter galaxies, being much more massive, would be even harder to miss. You will struggle to find a deep-field image that isn't filled with background galaxies (or clusters) lensing even more background ones. If there are dark galaxies, surely they would be in the foreground of some of the visible galaxies -- otherwise what prevents that? Finally, we do have some gravitational structuring of dark matter; the standard description of structure formation requires it, and it's hard to get the late-time structures we see without dark matter filaments. There's undoubtedly some meat on the Structure Formation wikipedia page and the things it links to, but a briefer and simpler overview is in the last three paragraphs at http://sci.esa.int/planck/51560-the-history-of-structure-formation-in-the-universe/ http://sci.esa.int/planck/51560-the-history-of-structure-for...

JProthero 8y ago
This is exactly the comprehensive reply I was hoping for, thanks. I dug up a Carroll post on the arrow of time and the big bang for this thread which turned out to be from 2004, so I know the feeling. If there are any other non-experts like me this far down this reply chain who are interested in dark sector speculation, in addition to raattgift's excellent links I'd recommend the Wikipedia page on the Lightest Supersymmetric Particle [1] and Rob Reid's recent podcast with dark matter researcher Priya Natarajan [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightest_supersymmetric_particle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightest_supersymmetric_partic... [2] https://after-on.com/episodes-31-60/036 https://after-on.com/episodes-31-60/036