Warm Dark Matter meets Cold Dark Matter Isocurvature
Abstract
Isocurvature fluctuations can be generated in various scenarios in the early Universe. In particular, some specific models predict those with a blue-tilted spectrum, which is consistent with the constraints from cosmic microwave background such as Planck, although isocurvature fluctuations with an almost scale-invariant spectrum are severely constrained. We argue that cold dark matter (CDM) isocurvature fluctuations with blue-tilted spectrum are not only consistent with current cosmological data, but also can loosen the bound on the masses of warm dark matter (WDM), which suppresses small-scale power. In pure thermal WDM models with the adiabatic initial condition, a combination of the data from Lyman-, gravitational lensing, and Milky Way satellites gives a lower bound on the WDM mass as at C.L. while mixed WDM+CDM models loosen these bounds to keV for a warm-fraction and eV for . On the other hand, as we demonstrate, WDM scenarios with a blue-tilted CDM isocurvature power spectrum, even with only CDM contribution (), can allow WDM masses as low as eV. We further assess the implications of this ``warm + cold-isocurvature'' extension for the small-scale structure by performing -body simulations, particularly focusing on nonlinear matter power spectrum and halo mass function.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2508.03805,
title = {Warm Dark Matter meets Cold Dark Matter Isocurvature},
author = {Sai Chaitanya Tadepalli and Tomo Takahashi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.03805},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
42 pages, 9 figures