Formation, gravitational clustering, and interactions of nonrelativistic solitons in an expanding universe

Cold dark matter (CDM) models predict small-scale structure in excess of observations of the cores and abundance of dwarf galaxies. These problems might be solved, and the virtues of CDM models retained, even without postulating ad hoc dark matter particle or field interactions, if the dark matter is composed of ultralight scalar particles (m approximately 10(-22) eV), initially in a (cold) Bose-Einstein condensate, similar to axion dark matter models. The wave properties of the dark matter stabilize gravitational collapse, providing halo cores and sharply suppressing small-scale linear power.