The epoch of structure formation in blue mixed dark matter models

Recent data on the high--redshift abundance of damped Ly$\alpha$ systems are compared with theoretical predictions for `blue' (i.e. $n>1$) Mixed Dark Matter models. The results show that decreasing the hot component fraction $\Omega_\nu$ and/or increasing the primordial spectral index $n$ implies an earlier epoch of cosmic structure formation. However, we also show that varying $\Omega_\nu$ and $n$ in these directions makes the models barely consistent with the observed abundance of galaxy clusters. Therefore, requiring at the same time observational constraints on damped Ly$\alpha$ systems and cluster abundance to be satisfied represents a challenge for the Mixed Dark Matter class of models.