Constraining Dark Matter-Baryon Scattering with Linear Cosmology

By C. Dvorkin, Kfir Blum, M. Kamionkowski. 2013

255 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We derive constraints on elastic scattering between baryons and dark matter using the cosmic microwave background (CMB) data from the Planck satellite and the Lyman-alpha forest data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Elastic scattering allows baryons and dark matter to exchange momentum, affecting the dynamics of linear density perturbations in the early Universe. We derive constraints to scattering cross sections of the form sigma \propto v^n, allowing for a wide range of velocity dependencies with n between -4 and 2. We improve and correct previous estimates where they exist, including velocity-independent cross section as well as dark matter millicharge and electromagnetic dipole moments. Lyman-alpha forest data dominates the constraints for n>-3, where the improvement over CMB data alone can be several orders of magnitude. Dark matter-baryon scattering cannot affect the halo mass function on mass scales M>10^{12} M_{solar}. Our results imply, model-independently, that a baryon in the halo of a galaxy like our own Milky Way, does not scatter from dark matter particles during the age of the galaxy.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/886961b40561c46d6d102e6d63315ebd54666aea

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Citations in the corpus

CMB-S4 Science Case, Reference Design, and Project Plan (2019, methodology): “This effect has been used to search for evidence of DM-proton scattering for the case of heavy DM, using CMB and Lyman-α forest measurements [269, 270, 271].”
Direct detection of strongly interacting sub-GeV dark matter via electron recoils (2019, unknown): “[61–67, 69, 70]).”
Dark matter models and direct detection (2019, background): “A millicharged DM candidate can scatter off the protons and electrons with a Rutherford-type cross section, leading to both a suppression of the growth of DM structure [47] as well as a DM-baryon drag force which leaves an imprint on the CMB anisotropies [48].”
Non-Abelian dark matter and dark radiation (2015, methodology): “The interaction between dark matter and dark radiation is encoded in the momentum transfer rate τ−1 c [49].”
The Simons Observatory: science goals and forecasts (2018, background): “Finally, they probe large (nuclear-scale) interaction cross sections which are inaccessible to traditional dark-matter direct searches, due to the extensive shielding of those experiments (Chen et al. 2002; Dvorkin et al. 2014; Emken and Kouvaris 2018).”
Constraints on neutrinos and WDM Hints, neutrino bounds and WDM constraints from SDSS DR14 Lyman-$\alpha$ and Planck full-survey data (2019, methodology): “Since it extends the lever arm of other cosmological probes towards smaller scales, it has often been used to constraint the parameters of models affecting only the smallest scales – like warm dark matter (WDM) [1–4] or interacting dark matter [5–7] – or altering the global shape of the power spectr”
Using the Milky Way satellites to study interactions between cold dark matter and radiation (2014, unknown): “…have been shown to suppress small-scale density fluctuations (Boehm et al. 2001, 2002, 2005; Boehm & Schaeffer 2005; Chen et al. 2002; van den Aarssen et al. 2012; Dvorkin et al. 2014) but the implications for the satellite galaxy abundance have not been studied using numerical simulations.”