Impact of dark matter decays and annihilations on reionization
By M. Mapelli, A. Ferrara, Elena Pierpaoli, Sissa, Caltech. 2006
153 citations recorded by the source corpus.
One of the possible methods to distinguish among various dark matter (DM) candidates is to study the effects of DM decays. We consider four different DM candidates [light dark matter (LDM), gravitinos, neutralinos and sterile neutrinos], for each of them deriving the decaying/annihilation rate, the influence on reionization, matter temperature and cosmic microwave background (CMB) spectra. We find that LDM particles (1–10 MeV) and sterile neutrinos (2–8 keV) can be sources of partial early reionization (z ~< 100). However, their integrated contribution to Thomson optical depth is small (~< 0.01) with respect to the 3-yr WMAP results (τe = 0.09 ± 0.03). Finally, they can significantly affect the behaviour of matter temperature. On the contrary, effects of heavy DM candidates (gravitinos and neutralinos) on reionization and heating are minimal. All the considered DM particles have completely negligible effects on the CMB spectra.
Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/50bc31eba561766769ec578fa5fa6d98a8839610
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In Astronomy and Astrophysics
In Nuclear and High Energy Physics
- A. Ferrara
- A. Mesinger
- J. Pritchard
- Benedetta Ciardi
- Mário G. Santos
- G. Mellema
- F. Iocco
- Leon V. E. Koopmans
Citations in the corpus
- The physics of the intergalactic medium (2007, background): “…of an isotropic cosmological H II region into a multicomponent IGM is described by (Donahue and Shull, 1987; Meiksin and Madau, 1993; 22 Excepted are scenarios invoking reionization by decaying or annihilating dark matter particles (Mapelli et al., 2006; Sciama, 1982, 1998; Scott et al., 1991).”
- Reionization and the Cosmic Dawn with the Square Kilometre Array (2012, methodology): “The alteration of the ionization state of the IGM may be seen through the CMB cross-correlation power spectra (Padmanabhan & Finkbeiner 2005; Mapelli et al. 2006), and the forthcoming PLANCK data may show hints of, or rule out low mass DM particles self-annihilating with cross sections at the level…”