No, the (hypothetical) topological defects mentioned in Section 7 of the article are configurations of (hypothetical) scalar fields (like the Higgs field, but w

No, the (hypothetical) topological defects mentioned in Section 7 of the article are configurations of (hypothetical) scalar fields (like the Higgs field, but with different equations of motion): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibble%E2%80%93Zurek_mechanism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibble%E2%80%93Zurek_mechanism Modeling dark matter as a scalar field is bog-standard stuff, what's unusual here is the way it's arranged.