Dark stars powered by dark matter annihilation have been proposed as the first luminous sources in the universe. These stars are believed to form in the central dark matter cusp of low-mass minihalos. Recent calculations indicate stellar masses up to
sim1000 solar masses and/or have very long lifetimes. The UV photons from these objects could therefore contribute significantly to cosmic reionization. Here we show that such dark star models would require a somewhat artificial reionization history, based on a double-reionization phase and a late star-burst near redshift $zsim6$, in order to fulfill the WMAP constraint on the optical depth as well as the Gunn-Peterson constraint at $zsim6$. This suggests that, if dark stars were common in the early universe, then models are preferred which predict a number of UV photons similar to conventional Pop. III stars. This excludes dark stars with 100 solar masses that enter a main-sequence phase and other models that lead to a strong increase in the number of UV photons. We also derive constraints for massive as well as light dark matter candidates from the observed X-ray, gamma-ray and neutrino background, considering dark matter profiles which have been steepened during the formation of dark stars. This increases the clumping factor at high redshift and gives rise to a higher dark matter annihilation rate in the early universe. We furthermore estimate the potential contribution from the annihilation products in the remnants of dark stars, which may provide a promising path to constrain such models further, but which is currently still uncertain.
Light dark matter annihilating into electron-positron pairs emits a significant amount of internal bremsstrahlung that may contribute to the cosmic gamma-ray background. The amount of emitted gamma-rays depends on the dark matter clumping factor. Rec
ent calculations indicate that this value should be of order $10^6-10^7$. That allows us to calculate the expected gamma-ray background contribution from dark matter annihilation. We find that the light dark matter model can be ruled out if a constant thermally-averaged cross section is assumed (s-wave annihilation). For more massive dark matter candidates like neutralinos, however, cosmic constraints are weaker.
Magnetic fields in the early universe can significantly alter the thermal evolution and the ionization history during the dark ages. This is reflected in the 21 cm line of atomic hydrogen, which is coupled to the gas temperature through collisions at
high redshifts, and through the Wouthuysen-Field effect at low redshifts. We present a semi-analytic model for star formation and the build-up of a Lyman alpha background in the presence of magnetic fields, and calculate the evolution of the mean 21 cm brightness temperature and its frequency gradient as a function of redshift. We further discuss the evolution of linear fluctuations in temperature and ionization in the presence of magnetic fields and calculate the effect on the 21 cm power spectrum. At high redshifts, the signal is increased compared to the non-magnetic case due to the additional heat input into the IGM from ambipolar diffusion and the decay of MHD turbulence. At lower redshifts, the formation of luminous objects and the build-up of a Lyman alpha background can be delayed by a redshift interval of 10 due to the strong increase of the filtering mass scale in the presence of magnetic fields. This tends to decrease the 21 cm signal compared to the zero-field case. In summary, we find that 21 cm observations may become a promising tool to constrain primordial magnetic fields.
We calculate the reionization history for different models of the stellar population and explore the effects of primordial magnetic fields, dark matter decay and dark matter annihilation on reionization. We find that stellar populations based on a Sc
alo-type initial mass function for Population II stars can be ruled out as sole sources for reionization, unless star formation efficiencies of more than 10% or very high photon escape fractions from the parental halo are adopted. When considering primordial magnetic fields, we find that the additional heat injection from ambipolar diffusion and decaying MHD turbulence has significant impact on the thermal evolution and the ionization history of the post-recombination universe and on structure formation. The magnetic Jeans mass changes the typical mass scale of the star forming halos, and depending on the adopted stellar model we derive upper limits to the magnetic field strength between 0.7 and $5 $nG (comoving). For dark matter annihilation, we find an upper limit to the thermally averaged mass-weighted cross section of $10^{-33} mathrm{cm}^3mathrm{/s/eV}$. For dark matter decay, our calculations yield a lower limit to the lifetime of dark matter particles of $3times10^{23}$ s. These limits are in agreement with constraints from recombination and the X-ray background and provide an independent confirmation at a much later epoch.
