TY - JOUR
T1 - Closing the window on fuzzy dark matter with the 21-cm signal
AU - Flitter, Jordan
AU - Kovetz, Ely D.
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank Debanjan Sarkar for reviewing our implementation of the heating in 21-cm fast version 3.1.3. We would like to thank David Marsh, Selim Hotinli, and Edoardo Vitagliano for useful discussions. We would like also to thank the anonymous referees for their comments that helped to improve the quality of the paper. J. F. is supported by the Zin fellowship awarded by the Ben-Gurion University (BGU) Kreitmann School. E. D. K. acknowledges support from an Azrieli faculty fellowship.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 American Physical Society.
PY - 2022/9/15
Y1 - 2022/9/15
N2 - Fuzzy dark matter (FDM) is a well-motivated candidate for dark matter (DM) as its tiny mass and large de-Broglie wavelength suppress small-scale matter fluctuations, thereby solving some of the small-scale discrepancies in ΛCDM. Although it has been ruled out as the single component of DM by several observables, there is still a region in the FDM parameter space (the "FDM window,"10-25 eV≪mFDM≪10-23 eV) where FDM is allowed to comprise a large portion of the total DM. In this work, for the first time, we study the signature of FDM (comprised of ultralight axions) in fractions less than unity on the 21-cm signal and its detectability by 21-cm interferometers such as HERA, taking into account the degeneracy with both astrophysical and cosmological parameters, using a new pipeline that combines modified versions of the camb and 21-cmfast codes. Our forecasts imply that HERA in its design performance will be sensitive to FDM fractions as small as 1% in the FDM window, and improve over existing bounds for other masses by up to an order of magnitude.
AB - Fuzzy dark matter (FDM) is a well-motivated candidate for dark matter (DM) as its tiny mass and large de-Broglie wavelength suppress small-scale matter fluctuations, thereby solving some of the small-scale discrepancies in ΛCDM. Although it has been ruled out as the single component of DM by several observables, there is still a region in the FDM parameter space (the "FDM window,"10-25 eV≪mFDM≪10-23 eV) where FDM is allowed to comprise a large portion of the total DM. In this work, for the first time, we study the signature of FDM (comprised of ultralight axions) in fractions less than unity on the 21-cm signal and its detectability by 21-cm interferometers such as HERA, taking into account the degeneracy with both astrophysical and cosmological parameters, using a new pipeline that combines modified versions of the camb and 21-cmfast codes. Our forecasts imply that HERA in its design performance will be sensitive to FDM fractions as small as 1% in the FDM window, and improve over existing bounds for other masses by up to an order of magnitude.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85138136589&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevD.106.063504
DO - 10.1103/PhysRevD.106.063504
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85138136589
VL - 106
JO - Physical Review D - Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology
JF - Physical Review D - Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology
SN - 1550-7998
IS - 6
M1 - 063504
ER -