# Emergent long-range interactions in Bose-Einstein Condensates

## TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that Bose-Einstein condensates can mediate emergent long-range interactions between sources, which could have significant implications for dark matter models, especially in ultra-light scenarios like Fuzzy Dark Matter.

## Contribution

It reveals that BECs can produce long-range forces via phonons, even with negligible self-interactions, impacting dark matter phenomenology.

## Key findings

- Long-range interaction range scales as iverges with decreasing self-interaction.
- Phonons mediate the force despite gapless dispersion relations.
- Potential to influence galactic dynamics in dark matter models.

## Abstract

We consider a massive complex scalar field with contact interactions with a source and show that, upon Bose-Einstein condensation, there is an emergent long-range interaction between sources. This interaction becomes long-range in the limit of vanishing self-interaction between Bose-Einstein constituents. More generally, the range is given by $\ell^{-1}\propto \sqrt{\lambda n/m}$, with $\lambda$ being the 2-body self-interaction coupling constant, $n$ the particle number density in the condensate, and $m$ the mass of the condensed particles. Naively this may sound surprising since in $\lambda\rightarrow 0$ limit gapless excitations of the condensate have dispersion relation $\omega_k=k^2/2m$, yet for the mediated force we have $F\propto 1/r^2$. The reason behind this seemingly counterintuitive result lies in the fact that the force is being mediated by the phonon, which happens to acquire a nontrivial derivative interaction with the source. We discuss the potential ramifications of this observation for dark matter models. In particular, we show that this force can compete with gravity on galactic scales for a wide range of dark matter mass, provided that the interaction with baryons allows the presence of an extended dark matter condensate core. The effect could be of particular interest in ultra-light dark matter models, such as Fuzzy Dark Matter.