Nonlinear cosmological structure with ultralight bosons via modified gravity

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that ultralight boson dark matter models can be simulated using modified gravity frameworks, revealing that quantum potential effects suppress and smooth cosmic structure at non-linear scales.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to model ultralight boson dark matter using modified gravity equations and adapts existing simulation tools for this purpose.

Findings

Quantum potential causes additional suppression of power at non-linear scales.

Quantum effects can smooth initial features in the matter power spectrum.

The modified gravity framework effectively captures ultralight boson dynamics.

Abstract

Ultra-light bosons as dark matter has become a model of major interest in Cosmology, due to the possible imprint of a distinct signature in the cosmic structure both at the linear and non-linear scales. In this work we show that the equations of motion for density perturbations for this kind of models can be written in terms of a modified gravitational potential. Taking advantage of this parallelism, we use the MG-PICOLA code originally developed for modified gravity models to evolve the density field of axion models with and without self-interaction. Our results indicate that the quantum potential adds extra suppression of power at the non-linear level, and it is even capable of smoothing any bumpy features initially present in the mass power spectrum.