Beyond Collisionless Dark Matter: Particle Physics Dynamics for Dark Matter Halo Structure

By S. Tulin, Hai-Bo Yu, K. Zurek. 2013

430 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Dark matter (DM) self-interactions have important implications for the formation and evolution of structure, from dwarf galaxies to clusters of galaxies. We study the dynamics of self-interacting DM via a light mediator, focusing on the quantum resonant regime where the scattering cross section has a non-trivial velocity dependence. While there are long-standing indications that observations of small scale structure in the Universe are not in accord with the predictions of collisionless DM, theoretical study and simulations of DM self-interactions have focused on parameter regimes with simple analytic solutions for the scattering cross section, with constant or classical velocity (and no angular) dependence. We devise a method that allows us to explore the velocity and angular dependence of self-scattering more broadly, in the strongly-coupled resonant and classical regimes where many partial modes are necessary for the achieving the result. We map out the entire parameter space of DM self-interactions --- and implications for structure observations --- as a function of the coupling and the DM and mediator masses. We derive a new analytic formula for describing resonant s-wave scattering. Finally, we show that DM self-interactions can be correlated with observations of Sommerfeld enhancements in DM annihilation through indirect detection experiments.

Subfields: Acoustics and Ultrasonics, Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/258ee19ece059caf7798f78ce7b0abadb5e4e86e

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Citations in the corpus

Self-Interacting Dark Matter from a Non-Abelian Hidden Sector (2014, background): “[86].”
Detecting superlight dark matter with Fermi-degenerate materials (2015, background): “In the Born regime, where αXmX mφ, the analytic perturbative result [59, 60] for attractive and repulsive forces is”
Gravitational probes of dark matter physics (2017, background): “Note that the cross section to which we refer here is the momentum-transfer or viscosity cross section, depending on the specific SIDM model [163, 41].”
Light dark matter: Models and constraints (2017, background): “in order to regulate the forward and backward scattering divergences [94].”
A facility to search for hidden particles at the CERN SPS: the SHiP physics case (2015, methodology): “In these regimes, a numerical solution for σ has been performed [149, 154].”
Colliding clusters and dark matter self-interactions (2013, background): “…long-range interactions can be significantly relaxed if the mediator of the interaction has a small but non-zero mass so that DM self-interactions become velocity independent in systems with low velocity such as dwarf spheroidal galaxies (Buckley & Fox 2010; Loeb & Weiner 2011; Tulin et al. 2013).”
Core formation in dwarf haloes with self-interacting dark matter: no fine-tuning necessary (2014, background): “For example, the SIDM cross section could vary as σ/m ∝ v−4 if the interaction were a dark version of Rutherford scattering, with a massless force carrier (Tulin et al., 2013b).”
Constraining light dark matter with low-energy e+e− colliders (2013, background): “A light mediator may play a significant role in setting the DM relic density [56, 57], or in alleviating possible problems with small-scale structure in ΛCDM cosmology [58, 59].”
CMB-S4 Science Case, Reference Design, and Project Plan (2019, background): “Such theories have been put forward in the context of self-interacting DM [295, 296, 297] in order to obtain a velocity-dependent self-interaction cross-section that can fit both the observed density profiles of dwarf galaxies and of large galaxy clusters.”
An Introduction to Particle Dark Matter (2019, neutral): “[76] Tulin, S.”