A lower bound on the mass of cold thermal dark matter from Planck

By Céline Boehm, M. Dolan, C. McCabe. 2013

277 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We show that the new measurement of the effective number of neutrinos (Neff) by the Planck satellite can be used to set a robust lower bound on the mass of cold thermal dark matter of (MeV). Our limit applies if the dark matter remains in thermal equilibrium by coupling to electrons and photons or through interactions with neutrinos, and applies regardless of whether the dark matter annihilation cross-section is s-wave or p-wave. To illustrate our bounds we apply them to a model of a supersymmetric neutralino annihilating to neutrinos, via a light mixed left-right handed sneutrino mediator. While this scenario was not constrained by previous data, the Planck limits on Neff allow us to set a lower bound on the neutralino dark matter mass of 3.5 MeV.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/06005732a50ee8af092d64a1897398b6f59813dd

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Citations in the corpus

Reducing the H0 and σ8 tensions with dark matter-neutrino interactions. (2017, background): “neutrino fluid and mimic an increase in the value of Neff [46,47].”
Neutrino decoupling beyond the Standard Model: CMB constraints on the Dark Matter mass with a fast and precise Neff evaluation (2018, background): “Finally, we note that generically a change on Neff is also accompanied by a change on the primordial Helium abundance [18, 21, 22] (Yp), and the CMB is sensitive to both [1, 2].”
Direct detection of strongly interacting sub-GeV dark matter via electron recoils (2019, unknown): “These constraints are based on, for example, the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) [61–70], Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) [71–74], Galactic center gas clouds [75], or Supernova 1987A [72, 76].”
Refined bounds on MeV-scale thermal dark sectors from BBN and the CMB (2019, methodology): “We have also compared our predictions of YP and D/H|P with those reported in [96] (which used PArthENoPEv1 [164], see [165] for an updated version of the code).”
Dark matter models and direct detection (2019, methodology): “[78, 79, 80] used measurements of abundances and the baryon density to set lower bounds on the DM mass mχ & 1−10 MeV, with the specific number depending on the number of degrees of freedom of the candidate.”
Extended gamma-ray emission from Coy Dark Matter (2014, background): “Other examples of CDM include light neutralino dark matter, which can lead to a large signal in the effective number of neutrinos Neff but nowhere else [18, 19].”
Light dark matter: Models and constraints (2017, methodology): “This is viable formφ ≳ 10 MeV, and excluded formφ ≲ 10 MeV if φ is in equilibrium with the neutrinos during BBN [57].”
Dark matter, millicharges, axion and scalar particles, gauge bosons, and other new physics with LDMX (2018, background): “[124] C.”
Beyond effective field theory for dark matter searches at the LHC (2013, background): “This is a flexible mechanism allowing dark matter with mass ranging from MeV to multi-TeV [63, 64].”
Fundamental composite dynamics: A review (2020, background): “In fact, lighter masses will change the effective number of neutrino species [184] which is in tension with the Planck data [185].”