English

Clustering with Light (but Massive) Relics

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2025-12-17 v1

Abstract

We consider the effect of Light (but Massive) Relics (LiMRs) on the clustering of matter in the early Universe. We account for the fact that LiMRs which are massive enough may cluster on large length scales at early times, and may thus impact weak lensing of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) even on small angular scales. In particular, we find that LiMRs in the \gtrsim eV mass range (and even >10> 10 eV), can constitute a non-negligible component of dark matter. This opens up a class of scenarios in which energy is injected as dark radiation, but begins to redshift as matter before recombination, thus avoiding constraints on ΔNeff\Delta N_{eff} while providing an eV-range dark matter component.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2512.14672,
  title  = {Clustering with Light (but Massive) Relics},
  author = {Jason Kumar and Pearl Sandick and Shuting Xu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.14672},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

9 pages, 3 figures, PDFLatex

R2 v1 2026-07-01T08:27:49.401Z