| Abstract: |
If dark matter particle masses are below the eV scale, they must be bosonic in nature. As a result, light scalar dark matter (LSDM) candidates exhibit wave-like properties that make DM halos fundamentally 'lumpy', with a significant amount of substructure on scales much smaller than the virial radius. In this talk I will outline the rapidly-evolving understanding of three categories of LSDM substructure: Quasiparticles and Solitons (for LSDM particles in the mass range 10^{-22} eV < m < 10^{-20} eV); and bound Solar/Earth Halos (for particles in the mass range 10^{-17} eV < m <10^{-8}). The resulting predictions for each, informed by cutting-edge simulations and direct observations, can lead to discovery or constraint on a wide range of LSDM models; in some cases, this is possible even if DM exhibits no non-gravitational couplings to matter. |
