Constraints on the Dark Matter Particle Mass from the Number of Milky Way Satellites

By E. Polisensky, M. Ricotti. 2010

147 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We have conducted N-body simulations of the growth of Milky Way-sized halos in cold and warm dark matter cosmologies. The number of dark matter satellites in our simulated Milky Ways decreases with decreasing mass of the dark matter particle. Assuming that the number of dark matter satellites exceeds or equals the number of observed satellites of the Milky Way, we derive lower limits on the dark matter particle mass. We find with 95% confidence m{sub s}>13.3 keV for a sterile neutrino produced by the Dodelson and Widrow mechanism, m{sub s}>8.9 keV for the Shi and Fuller mechanism, m{sub s}>3.0 keV for the Higgs decay mechanism, and m{sub WDM}>2.3 keV for a thermal dark matter particle. The recent discovery of many new dark matter dominated satellites of the Milky Way in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey allows us to set lower limits comparable to constraints from the complementary methods of Lyman-{alpha} forest modeling and x-ray observations of the unresolved cosmic x-ray background and of dark matter halos from dwarf galaxy to cluster scales. Future surveys like LSST, DES, PanSTARRS, and SkyMapper have the potential to discover many more satellites and further improve constraints on the dark matter particle mass.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7a02d4d29267f0c01482d20e8f7f6f292db28c48

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

Citations in the corpus

THE GHOSTS SURVEY. I. HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE ADVANCED CAMERA FOR SURVEYS DATA (2011, background): “…problem has sparked much debate as it places strong constraints on the nature of dark matter (e.g., Zentner & Bullock 2003; Strigari et al. 2007; Polisensky & Ricotti 2011) as well as the behavior of baryons in dark-matter potentials (e.g., Bullock et al. 2000; Ricotti & Gnedin 2005; Okamoto…”
Numerical simulations of the dark universe: State of the art and the next decade (2012, background): “The suppression of small scale power may help to explain the puzzling dearth of Milky Way satellite galaxies [286, 287].”
“Non-cold” dark matter at small scales: a general approach (2017, methodology): “We can estimate the number of MW satellites following the approach of [14, 81], i.”
Non-linear evolution of cosmological structures in warm dark matter models (2011, background): “This enables us to differentiate between genuine structures and spurious structures, which can collapse out of the initial particle lattice (cf. Wang & White 2007; Polisensky & Ricotti 2011).”
The properties of warm dark matter haloes (2013, background): “This result also gives us confidence that our ability to count satellites is not impaired by the numerical issues (c.f. Polisensky & Ricotti 2011).”
Sterile neutrinos in cosmology (2017, background): “The Milky Way’s Local Group satellite galaxy counts can also provide limits on the free streaming scale since the free streaming suppresses dwarf galaxy formation [192, 193, 191, 173].”
Self-Interacting Dark Matter from a Non-Abelian Hidden Sector (2014, background): “WDM tends to be too efficient in wiping out structure, leaving too few subhalos in the Milky Way [64].”
Cores in warm dark matter haloes: a Catch 22 problem (2012, background): “…et al. 2005; Seljak et al. 2006; Abazajian & Koushiappas 2006; Boyarsky et al. 2009b,c)1 As a complementary study Macciò & Fontanot (2010, see also Polisensky & Ricotti 2011) compared the subhalo abundance of a Milky Way like object in different numerical warm dark matter realizations with…”
Is there a "too big to fail" problem in the field? (2014, background): “For example, Schneider et al. (2014) & Klypin et al. (2014) have argued that WDM cannot reproduce in detail the measur d galactic VF, regardless ofmWDM. keV are ruled out by the number of ultra-faint satellites observed around the MW (e.g. Polisensky & Ricotti 2011).”
A White Paper on keV sterile neutrino Dark Matter (2016, methodology): “Based on the consideration above, the authors of [482] derive a lower limit of mWDM> 2.”
Small-Scale Challenges to the ΛCDM Paradigm (2017, background): “…satellites sets a lower limit on the number of subhalos within the Milky Way, and therefore, a lower limit on the warm dark matter particle mass. Polisensky & Ricotti (2011) find this constraint is m > 2.3 keV (95% confidence) while Lovell et al. (2014) find m > 1.6 keV; these differences come…”
Small scale problems of the $\Lambda$CDM model: a short review (2016, unknown): “the Burkert’s proﬁle core radius [ﬁgure reproduced from254]. Moreover, WDM produces too few subhaloes compared to, say strong-lensing subhalo fraction, as shown by the m = 2 keV thermal relic of Ref. [250], and by several other authors [e.g.,257–259]. A 1 kpc core requires a 0.1 keV thermal candidat”
The Milky Way’s bright satellites as an apparent failure of ΛCDM (2011, background): “Although this result is very promising, it remains to be seen whether WDM simulations produce enough substructure to account for the ultra-faint galaxies of the MW (Macciò & Fontanot 2010; Polisensky & Ricotti 2011).”