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Register a new userCosmological Limits on Hidden Sector Dark Matter
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We explore the model-independent constraints from cosmology on a dark-matter particle with no prominent standard model interactions that interacts and thermalizes with other particles in a hidden sector. Without specifying detailed hidden-sector particle physics, we characterize the relevant physics by the annihilation cross section, mass, and temperature ratio of the hidden to visible sectors. While encompassing the standard cold WIMP scenario, we do not require the freeze-out process to be nonrelativistic. Rather, freeze-out may also occur when dark matter particles are semirelativistic or relativistic. We solve the Boltzmann equation to find the conditions that hidden-sector dark matter accounts for the observed dark-matter density, satisfies the Tremaine-Gunn bound on dark-matter phase space density, and has a free-streaming length consistent with cosmological constraints on the matter power spectrum. We show that for masses <1.5 keV no region of parameter space satisfies all these constraints. This is a gravitationally-mediated lower bound on the dark-matter mass for any model in which the primary component of dark matter once had efficient interactions -- even if it has never been in equilibrium with the standard model.
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I consider constraints from observations on a cutoff scale in clustering due to free streaming of the dark matter in a warm dark matter cosmological model with a cosmological constant. The limits are derived in the framework of a sterile neutrino warm dark matter universe, but can be applied to gravitinos and other models with small scale suppression in the linear matter power spectrum. With freedom in all cosmological parameters including the free streaming scale of the sterile neutrino dark matter, limits are derived using observations of the fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background, the 3D clustering of galaxies and 1D clustering of gas in the Lyman-alpha (Ly-alpha) forest in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), as well as the Ly-alpha forest in high-resolution spectroscopic observations. In the most conservative case, using only the SDSS main-galaxy 3D power-spectrum shape, the limit is m_s > 0.11 keV; including the SDSS Ly-alpha forest, this limit improves to m_s > 1.7 keV. More stringent constraints may be placed from the inferred matter power spectrum from high-resolution Ly-alpha forest observations, which has significant systematic uncertainties; in this case, the limit improves to m_s > 3.0 keV (all at 95% CL).
Dark matter interactions with electrons or protons during the early Universe leave imprints on the cosmic microwave background and the matter power spectrum, and can be probed through cosmological and astrophysical observations. We explore these interactions using a diverse suite of data: cosmic microwave background anisotropies, baryon acoustic oscillations, the Lyman-$alpha$ forest, and the abundance of Milky-Way subhalos. We derive constraints using model-independent parameterizations of the dark matter--electron and dark matter--proton interaction cross sections and map these constraints onto concrete dark matter models. Our constraints are complementary to other probes of dark matter interactions with ordinary matter, such as direct detection, big bang nucleosynthesis, various astrophysical systems, and accelerator-based experiments.
We revise the cosmological phenomenology of Macroscopic Dark Matter (MDM) candidates, also commonly dubbed as Macros. A possible signature of MDM is the capture of baryons from the cosmological plasma in the pre-recombination epoch, with the consequent injection of high-energy photons in the baryon-photon plasma. By keeping a phenomenological approach, we consider two broad classes of MDM in which Macros are composed either of ordinary matter or antimatter. In both scenarios, we also analyze the impact of a non-vanishing electric charge carried by Macros. We derive constraints on the Macro parameter space from three cosmological processes: the change in the baryon density between the end of the Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) and the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) decoupling, the production of spectral distortions in the CMB and the kinetic coupling between charged MDM and baryons at the time of recombination. In the case of neutral Macros we find that the tightest constraints are set by the baryon density condition in most of the parameter space. For Macros composed of ordinary matter and with binding energy $I$, this leads to the following bound on the reduced cross-section: $sigma_X/M_X lesssim 6.8 cdot 10^{-7} left(I/mathrm{MeV}right)^{-1.56} , text{cm}^2 , text{g}^{-1}$. Charged Macros with surface potential $V_X$, instead, are mainly constrained by the tight coupling with baryons, resulting in $sigma_X/M_X lesssim 2 cdot 10^{-11} left(|V_X|/mathrm{MeV}right)^{-2} text{cm}^2 , text{g}^{-1}$. Finally, we show that future CMB spectral distortions experiments, like PIXIE and SuperPIXIE, would have the sensitivity to probe larger regions of the parameter space: this would allow either for a possible evidence or for an improvement of the current bounds on Macros as dark matter candidates.
The increasingly significant tensions within $Lambda$CDM, combined with the lack of detection of dark matter (DM) in laboratory experiments, have boosted interest in non-minimal dark sectors, which are theoretically well-motivated and inspire new search strategies for DM. Here we consider, for the first time, the possibility of DM having simultaneous interactions with photons, baryons, and dark radiation (DR). We have developed a new and efficient version of the Boltzmann code CLASS that allows for one DM species to have multiple interaction channels. With this framework we reassess existing cosmological bounds on the various interaction coefficients in multi-interacting DM scenarios. We find no clear degeneracies between these different interactions and show that their cosmological effects are largely additive. We further investigate the possibility of these models to alleviate the cosmological tensions, and find that the combination of DM-photon and DM-DR interactions can at the same time reduce the $S_8$ tension (from $2.3sigma$ to $1.2sigma$) and the $H_0$ tension (from $4.3sigma$ to $3.1sigma$). The public release of our code will pave the way for the study of various rich dark sectors.
We investigate the hypothesis that Coulomb-type interactions between dark matter (DM) and baryons explain the anomalously low 21cm brightness-temperature minimum at redshift z ~ 17 that was recently measured by the EDGES experiment. In particular, we reassess the validity of the scenario where a small fraction of the total DM is millicharged, focusing on newly derived constraints from Planck 2015 cosmic microwave background (CMB) data. Crucially, the CMB power spectrum is sensitive to DM-baryon scattering if the fraction of interacting DM is larger than (or comparable to) the fractional uncertainty in the baryon energy density. Meanwhile, there is a mass-dependent lower limit on the fraction for which the required interaction to cool the baryons sufficiently is so strong that it drives the interacting-DM temperature to the baryon temperature prior to their decoupling from the CMB. If this occurs as early as recombination, the cooling saturates. We precisely determine the viable parameter space for millicharged DM, and find that only a fraction (m_chi/MeV) 0.0115% <~ f <~ 0.4% of the entire DM content, and only for DM-particle masses between 0.5 MeV - 35 MeV, can be charged at the level needed to marginally explain the anomaly, without violating limits from SLAC, CMB, Big-Bang nucleosynthesis (BBN), or stellar and SN1987A cooling. In reality, though, we demonstrate that at least moderate fine tuning is required to both agree with the measured absorption profile and overcome various astrophysical sources of heating. Finally, we point out that a ~0.4% millicharged DM component which is tightly coupled to the baryons at recombination may resolve the current 2-sigma tension between the BBN and CMB determinations of the baryon energy density. Future CMB-S4 measurements will be able to probe this scenario directly.
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