A lower bound on the mass of dark matter particles

By Alexey Boyarsky, Oleg Ruchayskiy, D. Iakubovskyi. 2008

254 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We discuss the bounds on the mass of Dark Matter (DM) particles, coming from the analysis of DM phase-space distribution in dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs). After reviewing the existing approaches, we choose two methods to derive such a bound. The first one depends on the information about the current phase space distribution of DM particles only, while the second one uses both the initial and final distributions. We discuss the recent data on dSphs as well as astronomical uncertainties in relevant parameters. As an application, we present lower bounds on the mass of DM particles, coming from various dSphs, using both methods. The model-independent bound holds for any type of fermionic DM. Stronger, model-dependent bounds are quoted for several DM models (thermal relics, non-resonantly and resonantly produced sterile neutrinos, etc.). The latter bounds rely on the assumption that baryonic feedback cannot significantly increase the maximum of a distribution function of DM particles. For the scenario in which all the DM is made of sterile neutrinos produced via non-resonant mixing with the active neutrinos (NRP) this gives mNRP > 1.7 keV. Combining these results in their most conservative form with the X-ray bounds of DM decay lines, we conclude that the NRP scenario remains allowed in a very narrow parameter window only. This conclusion is independent of the results of the Lyman-α analysis. The DM model in which sterile neutrinos are resonantly produced in the presence of lepton asymmetry remains viable. Within the minimal neutrino extension of the Standard Model (the νMSM), both mass and the mixing angle of the DM sterile neutrino are bounded from above and below, which suggests the possibility for its experimental search.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a6470910090c6bcf183e2bfe596e2a264301f32c

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Citations in the corpus

Light inflaton hunter’s guide (2009, methodology): “ Second, with model parameters tuned within their ranges to minimise r.h.s. of the inequality (A.4), one does not exceed the lower bound on the sterile neutrino mass, M1 & 1.7 keV, from the study [45, 46] of the dark matter phase space density in dwarf spheroidal galaxies. Hence, in this model l”
Sterile neutrino Dark Matter (2018, background): “Assuming a particular primordial phase-space distribution of DM particles that obeys the Liouville theorem in the process of evolution, one may additionally strengthen the bounds [22] (see also [155] where the several newly-discovered satellite galaxies from wide-field optical surveys such as the Da”
A facility to search for hidden particles at the CERN SPS: the SHiP physics case (2015, background): “• M1 & 1 keV, resonant production [724] Moreover, as the primordial momentum distribution of DM particles is quasi-thermal in this case, structure formation data favors heavier masses (although the systematic uncertainty there is significant and hard to estimate).”
Gravitational probes of dark matter physics (2017, background): “4 keV by phase space arguments [98] — tighter constraints arise for specific production mechanisms in the context of astrophysical constraints, as discussed in the next section.”
Subhaloes in self-interacting galactic dark matter haloes (2012, background): “…have larger primordial thermal velocities, are able to alleviate the overabundance problem (e.g. Bode et al. 2001; Zavala et al. 2009) and at the same time, if their masses are & 1 keV, avoid current constraints on the matter power spectrum as measured by the Lyman−α forest (Boyarsky et al. 2009).”
Detecting superlight dark matter with Fermi-degenerate materials (2015, unknown): “Cosmologically, the keV mass scale is significant because it corresponds to the lower bound on the DM mass from the Lyman-α forest [24] and phase space packing [25, 26]; lighter (fermionic and thermalized) DM is inconsistent with cosmological observations (though see ref.”
Cores in warm dark matter haloes: a Catch 22 problem (2012, methodology): “The initial conditions for the two simulations plex and physically motivated models discussed in the literature (e.g. warm+cold dark matter, Boyarsky et al. (2009d); Macciò et al. (2012) or composite dark matter Khlopov (2006); Khlopov & Kouvaris (2008)) have been created using the same random…”
A White Paper on keV sterile neutrino Dark Matter (2016, background): “4) [311], but is still much stronger as compared to that from the Pauli blocking.”
Warm dark matter in low scale left-right theory (2012, result): “ be regarded as a degenerate Fermi gas, the requirement that the DM velocity on the Fermi surface must be less than the escape velocity, gives a lower bound on its mass m DM >0:468+0:137 0:082 keV [65]. A more sophisticated analysis which compares the maximum phase space density [64{66] with obse”
The Phenomenology of Right Handed Neutrinos (2013, background): “es. Phase space analysis - As a fermionic DM candidate, the mass of RH neutrinos is constrained by the Tremaine-Gunn bound[496] on the phase space density in the Milky way’s dwarf spheroidal galaxies [472, 474]. This yields a lower bound of MN >1 keV. In [490] it has been shown that phase space a”