English

Warm Dark Matter meets Cold Dark Matter Isocurvature

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2025-08-07 v1

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-α\alpha, gravitational lensing, and Milky Way satellites gives a lower bound on the WDM mass as 6 keV6~{\rm keV} at 95%95\% C.L. while mixed WDM+CDM models loosen these bounds to mWDM1m_{\rm WDM}\sim1 keV for a warm-fraction fWDM0.14f_{\rm WDM}\lesssim0.14 and mWDM600m_{\rm WDM}\sim600 eV for fWDM0.08f_{\rm WDM}\lesssim0.08. On the other hand, as we demonstrate, WDM scenarios with a blue-tilted CDM isocurvature power spectrum, even with only 1%1\% CDM contribution (fWDM0.99f_{\rm WDM}\sim0.99), can allow WDM masses as low as 600600 eV. We further assess the implications of this ``warm + cold-isocurvature'' extension for the small-scale structure by performing NN-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