DARK MATTER, LONG-RANGE FORCES, AND LARGE-SCALE STRUCTURE

If the dark matter in galaxies and clusters is nonbaryonic, it can interact with additional long-range fields that are invisible to experimental tests of the equivalence principle. We discuss the astrophysical and cosmological implications of a long-range force coupled only to the dark matter and find rather tight constraints on its strength. If the force is repulsive (attractive), the masses of galaxy groups and clusters (and the mean density of the universe inferred from them) have been systematically underestimated (overestimated). Such an interaction also has unusual implications for the growth of large-scale structure: a repulsive (attractive) force relatively enhances (suppresses) the growth of density perturbations on large scales and automatically generates a bias (antibias) between baryonic and nonbaryonic matter. We explore the consequent effects on the two-point correlation function, large-scale velocity flows, and microwave background anisotropies, for models with initial scale-invariant adiabatic perturbations and cold dark matter.