PIRSA:25040113

A Quantum Description of Wave Dark Matter

APA

Rodd, N. (2025). A Quantum Description of Wave Dark Matter. Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. https://pirsa.org/25040113

MLA

Rodd, Nicholas. A Quantum Description of Wave Dark Matter. Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Apr. 15, 2025, https://pirsa.org/25040113

BibTex

          @misc{ scivideos_PIRSA:25040113,
            doi = {10.48660/25040113},
            url = {https://pirsa.org/25040113},
            author = {Rodd, Nicholas},
            keywords = {Particle Physics},
            language = {en},
            title = {A Quantum Description of Wave Dark Matter},
            publisher = {Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics},
            year = {2025},
            month = {apr},
            note = {PIRSA:25040113 see, \url{https://scivideos.org/index.php/pirsa/25040113}}
          }
          

Nicholas Rodd Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Talk numberPIRSA:25040113
Source RepositoryPIRSA
Collection

Abstract

In this talk I will outline a fundamentally quantum description of bosonic dark matter from which the conventional classical-wave picture emerges when the mass is far below 10 eV. Exploiting fundamental results from quantum optics I will argue that the density matrix for dark matter is explicitly mixed. The formalism provides a continuous description of DM through the wave-particle transition, and using this I show how density fluctuations over various physical scales evolve between the two limits, with a unique behavior for DM emerging near the boundary of the wave and particle descriptions. If time permits, I will briefly describe how these effects would appear in axion haloscopes.