Tightening Bounds on Warm Dark Matter with High-Redshift Gamma-Ray Bursts

The cold dark matter paradigm successfully explains large-scale structure but faces persistent tensions on small scales. Warm dark matter (WDM) with $\mathrm{keV}$-scale particles can alleviate these issues by suppressing small-scale structure formation. The presence of collapsed structures at high redshifts places strong lower limits on the WDM particle mass $m_x$. Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are ideal high-redshift probes due to their extreme brightness. Using the most recent \emph{Swift} GRB data accumulated over the past two decades, we derive robust constraints on $m_x$ by conservatively assuming that the comoving GRB formation rate is proportional to the cosmic star formation rate (SFR), with an additional redshift evolution parameterized as $(1+z)^\alpha$. Applying a maximum-likelihood analysis to 118 GRBs with redshift $z<10$ and luminosity $L\ge 4.0\times10^{52}\,\mathrm{erg\,s^{-1}}$, we obtain $m_x \gtrsim 1.3\,\mathrm{keV}$ at the 95\% confidence level (CL). When the GRB rate is assumed to exactly trace the SFR (i.e., $\alpha=0$), the lower limit tightens to $m_x \gtrsim 3.4\,\mathrm{keV}$ at the same CL. These robust constraints demonstrate that GRBs are a powerful probe of the early Universe. A better understanding of the relationship between the GRB rate and the SFR would enable even tighter limits on WDM models.