Sterile neutrino dark matter bounds from galaxies of the Local Group

By S. Horiuchi, P. Humphrey, J. Oñorbe, K. Abazajian, M. Kaplinghat, S. Garrison-Kimmel. 2013

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We show that the canonical oscillation-based (nonresonant) production of sterile neutrino dark matter is inconsistent at >99% confidence with observations of galaxies in the Local Group. We set lower limits on the nonresonant sterile neutrino mass of 2.5 keV (equivalent to 0.7 keV thermal mass) using phase-space densities derived for dwarf satellite galaxies of the Milky Way as well as limits of 8.8 keV (equivalent to 1.8 keV thermal mass) based on subhalo counts of N-body simulations of M 31 analogs. Combined with improved upper mass limits derived from significantly deeper x-ray data of M 31 with full consideration for background variations, we show that there remains little room for nonresonant production if sterile neutrinos are to explain 100% of the dark matter abundance. Resonant and nonoscillation sterile neutrino production remain viable mechanisms for generating sufficient dark matter sterile neutrinos. © 2014 American Physical Society.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/59f91d08dff562fdda1a1fbb8a253da96efe203f

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Citations in the corpus

Lectures on Dark Matter Physics (2016, background): “mp; G3M haloR 3 halo 1=8 and mferm & O(10) eV. Generalizations of this phase-space argument lead to even tighter constraints. For example, the phase-space densities of dwarf galaxies suggest that [52] mferm & 0:7 keV: As expected, the bound on fermionic DM is much more stringent than that fo”
A White Paper on keV sterile neutrino Dark Matter (2016, methodology): “6 keV nonresonantly produced in the early Universe, is disfavored [312, 313] from analysis of the phase space density as the main component of galactic DM.”
Not so lumpy after all: modelling the depletion of dark matter subhaloes by Milky Way-like galaxies (2017, background): “Limits on warm dark matter models (e.g. Horiuchi et al. 2014, 2016) associated with requiring enough subhalos to host the known satellites will become even tighter.”
Core formation in dwarf haloes with self-interacting dark matter: no fine-tuning necessary (2014, background): “…power spectrum is non-standard (Zentner & Bullock, 2002; Polisensky & Ricotti, 2014; Garrison-Kimmel et al., 2014c) or the dark matter is warm rather than cold (Anderhalden et al., 2013; Lovell et al., 2014; Horiuchi et al., 2014) then the central densities of dark matter halos would decrease.”
Forged in FIRE: cusps, cores and baryons in low-mass dwarf galaxies (2015, background): “…these discrepancies as motivation to explore non-standard dark matter models (Macciò & Fontanot 2010; Vogelsberger et al. 2012; Rocha et al. 2013; Horiuchi et al. 2014; Governato et al. 2015), others have argued that that it may be possible to naturally resolve them through a better…”
Small-Scale Challenges to the ΛCDM Paradigm (2017, background): “…and satellite counts in M31 rule out an oscillation (Dodelson & Widrow 1994) origin for this line if it indeed originates from sterile neutrino dark matter (Horiuchi et al. 2014), leaving heavy scalar decay and possibly resonant conversion as possible production mechanisms (Merle & Schneider 2015).”
Dark matter cores all the way down (2015, background): “…providing unique constraints on feedback physics (e.g. Dekel & Silk 1986; Read et al. 2006b; Teyssier et al. 2013); while their high dark matter content makes them natural dark matter laboratories (e.g. Dalcanton & Hogan 2001; Shao et al. 2013; Horiuchi et al. 2014), and excellent sites to hunt ?”