Warm dark matter as a solution to the small scale crisis: New constraints from high redshift Lyman-α forest data

By M. Viel, George D. Becker, J. Bolton, M. Haehnelt. 2013

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We present updated constraints on the free-streaming of warm dark matter (WDM) particles derived from an analysis of the Lyman-� flux power spectrum measured from high-resolution spectra of 25 z > 4 quasars obtained with the Keck High Resolution Echelle Spectrometer (HIRES) and the Magellan Inamori Kyocera Echelle (MIKE) spectrograph. We utilize a new suite of high-resolution hydrodynamical simulations that explore WDM masses of 1, 2 and 4 keV (assuming the WDM consists of thermal relics), along with different physically motivated thermal histories. We carefully address different sources of systematic error that may affect our final results and perform an analysis of the Lyman-� flux power with conservative error estimates. By using a method that samples the multi-dimensional astrophysical and cosmological parameter space, we obtain a lower limit mWDM � 3.3 keV (2�) for warm dark matter particles in the form of early decoupled thermal relics. Adding the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Lyman-� flux power spectrum does not improve this limit. Thermal relics of masses 1 keV, 2 keV and 2.5 keV are disfavoured by the data at about the 9�, 4� and 3� C.L., respectively. Our analysis disfavours WDM models where there is a suppression in the linear matter power spectrum at (non-linear) scales corresponding to k = 10h/Mpc which

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Citations in the corpus

Constraints on Dark Matter Microphysics from the Milky Way Satellite Population (2019, result): “(8) We find mWDM > 3.26 keV with 95% confidence, which is consistent with previous MW satellite results (Jethwa et al. 2018) and competitive with Lyman-α forest constraints (Viel et al. 2013; Iršič et al. 2017b).”
The unexpected diversity of dwarf galaxy rotation curves (2015, background): “…give rise to cores in warm dark matter (WDM) haloes (e.g. Bode, Ostriker & Turok 2001; Lovell et al. 2012), although current lower limits on WDM particle masses imply cores that are much smaller than those inferred for many dwarfs (Macciò et al. 2012a; Shao et al. 2013; Viel et al. 2013).”
Using the Milky Way satellites to study interactions between cold dark matter and radiation (2014, background): “However, recent work suggests that such light candidates cannot simultaneously solve the small-scale problems of CDM and satisfy the particle mass constraints from the Lyman α forest and other observations (Schneider et al. 2013; Viel et al. 2013).”
Evidence of patchy hydrogen reionization from an extreme Lyα trough below redshift six (2014, methodology): “We model the UVB within our 100–1024 simulation following an approach similar to that of Bolton & Viel (2011) and Viel et al. (2013).”
Evidence for dark matter interactions in cosmological precision data? (2015, background): “the assumption of cold dark matter (CDM), or possibly warm dark matter (WDM), but with strong bounds on the velocity dispersion of warm particles in order to avoid a cut-off in the matter power spectrum on scales where precise data are available [3].”
Cosmology from cosmic shear power spectra with Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam first-year data (2018, background): “…galaxies (e.g., Cole et al. 2005; Yamamoto et al. 2006; Percival et al. 2010; Reid et al. 2010; Blake et al. 2011; Oka et al. 2014; Alam et al. 2017; Beutler et al. 2017), and the Lyman-α forest (e.g., McDonald et al. 2006; Palanque-Delabrouille et al. 2013; Viel et al. 2013; Iršič et al. 2017).”
Sterile neutrinos in cosmology (2017, background): “ most potentially powerful constraints on the matter power spectrum at small scales aected by WDM is the clustering of gas as measured along the line of sight to distant quasars in the Lyman-forest [170, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181]. The claimed level of the most recent constrai”
The Ups and Downs of Early Dark Energy solutions to the Hubble tension: A review of models, hints and constraints circa 2023 (2023, methodology): “[256] shows that Lyman-α data from eBOSS [257], the XQ-100 [258] and MIKE/HIRES [259] quasar samples are in tension with the EDE prediction, leading to the strongest constraints to date on fEDE.”
The Evolution of the Intergalactic Medium (2015, background): “See also Viel et al. (2013) for a recent analysis. www.annualreviews.org • intergalactic medium 13 here (McDonald & Eisenstein 2007; White et al. 2010; McQuinn & White 2011; Gontcho, Miralda-Escudé & Busca 2014; Pontzen et al. 2014; Arinyo-i-Prats et al. 2015).”
Dark matter, millicharges, axion and scalar particles, gauge bosons, and other new physics with LDMX (2018, background): “[140] M.”
Small-Scale Challenges to the ΛCDM Paradigm (2017, methodology): “Viel et al. (2013) used Lyman-α flux power spectra from 25 quasar sightlines to constrain the mass of thermal relic WDM particle to mWDM,th > 3.3 keV at 95% confidence.”
ETHOS - an effective theory of structure formation: dark matter physics as a possible explanation of the small-scale CDM problems (2015, background): “For example, Viel et al. (2013) finds a lower limit of mWDM & 3.3 keV, which is too large to provide solutions to the small scale problems of CDM that require mWDM ∼ 2 keV (Schneider et al. 2014).”
“Non-cold” dark matter at small scales: a general approach (2017, result): “While it is nowadays known that the production by non-resonant transitions (“Dodelson-Widrow mechanism”) [42–44](2) is incompatible with structure formation [12, 34], a suitable lepton number asymmetry in the early universe (whose origin is not necessarily clear, though) can resonantly enhance the a”
New Constraints on the free-streaming of warm dark matter from intermediate and small scale Lyman-$\alpha$ forest data (2017, methodology): “075, which we also do in our analysis here (see [7] for more details).”