Dark matter and dark energy induced by condensates

TL;DR

This paper explores how vacuum condensates from various phenomena can behave as dark matter and dark energy, potentially explaining cosmic observations and suggesting new experimental detection methods.

Contribution

It demonstrates that different vacuum condensates can act as dark components, providing a unified framework for understanding dark matter and dark energy.

Findings

Thermal states with cosmic microwave temperature contribute negligibly to dark energy.

Vacuum condensates from curved space and mixed particles could account for dark matter.

Axion-like particles and neutrino superpartners may explain dark energy components.

Abstract

It is shown that the vacuum condensate induced by many phenomena behaves as a perfect fluid which, under particular conditions, has zero or negative pressure. In particular, the condensates of thermal states, of fields in curved space and of mixed particles have been analyzed. It is shown that the thermal states with the cosmic microwave radiation temperature, the Unruh and the Hawking radiations give negligible contributions to the critical energy density of the universe, while the thermal vacuum of the intercluster medium could contribute to the dark matter, together with the vacuum energy of fields in curved space-time and of mixed neutrinos. Moreover, a component of the dark energy can be represented by the vacuum of axion-like particles mixed with photons and superpartners of neutrinos. The formal analogy among the systems characterized by the condensates can open new scenarios in the possibility to detect the dark components of the universe in table top experiments.