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stub for dark matter
added two references (the original one and a review) on LSPs as CDM candidates
In the case somebody is not aware, the dark energy listed under related concepts in fact (still) redirects to cosmological constant.
There is written
See in particular at FRW model for the role of the cosmological constant in homogeneous and isotropic models as in the standard model of cosmology. In that context the cosmological constant is also called the dark energy (density), which makes up about 70% of the energy density of the observable universe (the rest being dark matter) and a comparatively little bit of baryonic matter.
Are we making a controversial claim here or merely reporting standard knowledge?
Sorry, which piece should be controversial? This is the standard model of cosmology. Of course it’s not a mathematical truth. Do you want more discussion of the justification of the standard model of cosmology?
That dark energy is the cosmological constant, rather than something else.
That’s just terminology. Please feel invited to expand and explain that an effective cosmological constant may be induced from all sorts of stuff.
Hm, I thought I did discuss this somewhere on the Lab, where was it? Ah, at string theory FAQ:
The simple familiar example to compare this to is the cosmological constant in Einstein gravity: one can either consider it as an external parameter, a constant real number coefficient in front of the volume form summand of the Einstein-Hilbert Lagrangian, or else one can consider Einstein gravity coupled to a scalar field with some potential and consider those solutions to the equations of motion where this field is almost constant to good approximation. In such a case the field itself serves as an effective cosmological constant. (This is the mechanism behind the theory of cosmic inflation, see there for more details.) Hence the theory has one less external parameter (the “cosmological constant” is not fundamentally really a constant), which has instead been replaced by a field.
I can't expand and explain, because I don't know. I just want to know if redirecting dark energy to cosmological constant and implying there that they are the same thing is a reasonable thing to do.
On the one hand identifying the terms “dark energy” and “cosmological constant” is not an offense. Just consider that the official name of the standard model of cosmology is the CDM-concordance model where “” is the standard symbol for the cosmological constant and indicates the inclusion of “dark energy”, while “CDM” is for “cold dark matter”.
On the other hand, one may of course distinguish between the two terms, or at least have a discussion of their different history. The main technical distinction though is not actually reflected well by the difference in the two terms. The main technical fact to know is what is alluded to in the above blue box, that the Lagrangian of gravity on cosmological scales receives contributions to the term proportional to the volume form in two conceptually different ways: on the one hand there may be a (renormalized) constant in the theory, which just appears there, on the other hand the theory may contain fields whose Lagrangians effectively look like this constant, without techncially being equal to it.
But in cosmology it is quite common to subsume a huge amount of unknown territory in some simple constant. The “dark energy” could receive contributions from an infinitude of fields, but at the coarse-grained level of cosmology, it makes no difference. Even if one goes and specifies these fields a bit more, there is still immense no-knowledge: for instance in cosmic inflation the dark energy is taken to be the energy of a scalar field. But that scalar field in turn may very well be the effective result of a multitude of other scalar and non-scalar fields. Still, it is technically correct to speak of “the inflaton” where it is understood that this is an effective field of the model.
The same holds for “dark matter” itself. Dark matter could be lots of things and in particular could be compounds of plenty of different effects. Until one knows more, there is just one single parameter in the theory, the dark matter density.
(This is one of the mysteries of our world: that comparitively simplistic ordinary differential equations in a handful of such effective parameters provide such a astoundingly accurate model of the large scale structure of the observable universe. On the other hand, of course cosmic inflation itself is meant to be a partial explanation of that mystery…)
So in conclusion: as long as we don’t have more material, the redirect is perfectly fine. If on the other hand tomorrow there appears here a highly enegetic continutor who writes a bunch of paragraphs on cosmology and its more subtle aspects, then eventually it might be good to split into two entries that focus on different perspectives.
Edit to: dark matter by Urs Schreiber at 2018-03-31 00:26:11 UTC.
Author comments:
added new section “References – Evidence” with pointer to a new article on a new kind of evidence for dark matter
Edit to: dark matter by Urs Schreiber at 2018-03-31 00:42:24 UTC.
Author comments:
quote from van Dokkum et.al. slightly expanded
Edit to: dark matter by Urs Schreiber at 2018-03-31 01:03:14 UTC.
Author comments:
added cross-link with “bullet cluster”
Edit to: dark matter by Urs Schreiber at 2018-03-31 01:31:31 UTC.
Author comments:
references expanded
Edit to: dark matter by Urs Schreiber at 2018-03-31 01:32:23 UTC.
Author comments:
reference expanded
added pointer to
which is pretty useful
added this pointer on further recent evidence for dark matter:
added a minimum paragraph to the section on Core-cusp problem and further pointers to the literature. Thanks to Justin Read for discussion.
added pointer to the recent followup
on the earlier
added also pointer to apparent resolution of the “missing satellite problem” by the FIRE-2 computer simulation
Shea Garrison-Kimmel et al. Not so lumpy after all: modeling the depletion of dark matter subhalos by Milky Way-like galaxies (arXiv:1701.03792)
Shea Garrison-Kimmel, Next-generation Galaxy Formation Simulations with FIRE, 2018 (video recording)
Exciting times.
and today, more confirmation that the RAR comes out right with CDM:
changed the code for the images and the line breaks to the new format, then added this reference:
added pointer to
will also add this to neutrino
added pointer to
{MeissnerNicolai18a} Krzysztof A. Meissner, Hermann Nicolai, Standard Model Fermions and Infinite-Dimensional R-Symmetries, Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 091601 (2018) (arXiv:1804.09606)
{#MeissnerNicolai18b} Krzysztof A. Meissner, Hermann Nicolai, Planck Mass Charged Gravitino Dark Matter, Phys. Rev. D 100, 035001 (2019) (arXiv:1809.01441)
added pointer to
added pointer to
added pointer to last week’s
added pointer to today’s argument that dark matter has already be seen across a range of direct detection experiments, but mis-interpreted as noise, due to negligence of the possibility of inelastic plasmon excitations in crystalline detector material:
… and here is the rebuttal:
The result of Kurinsky et al should not be taken as evidence for dark matter, although it does highlight the ongoing need to investigate the effect of collective modes how [sic] we detect radiation.
on the claim that dark matter has already been detected across a range of solid-state detectors, but misinterpreted, I have added also pointer to this survey:
added pointer to today’s reply to the claimed rebuttal:
the points raised by RM do not invalidate our primary conclusions, as they pertain to a much different energy scale than we discuss in our paper.
added pointer to today’s
(more on the possible resolution of the core/cusp problem via putative DM heating)
added pointer to:
Torsten Bringmann, Maxim Pospelov, Novel direct detection constraints on light dark matter, Phys. Rev. Lett. 122 (2019) 171801 [arXiv:1810.10543, doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.122.171801]
Maxim Pospelov, Dark matter identification efforts, talk at Strings 2022 [indico:4940821, video]
Adding preprint:
Deffayet and Woodard construct a modified gravity theory which reproduces all the successes of cold dark matter in astrophysics and cosmology, and which the only way to distinguish between this theory and dark matter is to show that dark matter interacts with non-gravitational fields.
Francis Key
added pointer to:
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