Related papers: Intergalactic medium heating by dark matter
We derived the evolution of the energy deposition in the intergalactic medium (IGM) by different decaying (or annihilating) dark matter (DM) candidates. Heavy annihilating DM particles (with mass larger than a few GeV) have no influence on…
We reexamine the impact of dark matter (DM) annihilation on the intergalactic medium, taking into account the clumping of DM particles. We find that energy injection from the annihilation of the thermal relic DM particles may significantly…
The radiation background produced by the 21 cm spin-flip transition of neutral hydrogen at high redshifts can be a pristine probe of fundamental physics and cosmology. At z~30-300, the intergalactic medium (IGM) is visible in 21 cm…
Assuming that there exists a species of heavy sterile neutrinos($m_{\nu}>1$ keV) and their decays can serve as a heating source of the hot gas in galaxy clusters, we study how the observational constraints on cooling flow limit the mass of…
Observations of the redshifted 21 cm line from neutral hydrogen will open a new window on the early Universe. By influencing the thermal and ionization history of the intergalactic medium (IGM), annihilating dark matter (DM) can leave a…
We study the imprint of dark matter (DM) annihilation on the global 21 cm signal from the Dark Ages to Cosmic Reionization. Motivated by recent observations, we focus on three DM candidates: (i) a 10 GeV Bino-like neutralino (ii) a 200 GeV…
At low densities the standard ionisation history of the intergalactic medium (IGM) predicts a decreasing temperature of the IGM with decreasing density once hydrogen (and helium) reionisation is complete. Heating the high-redshift,…
The thermal evolution of the intergalactic medium (IGM) can serve as a sensitive probe of cosmological heat sources and sinks. We employ it to limit interactions between dark matter and baryons. After reionization the IGM temperature is set…
We determine the thermal evolution of the intergalactic medium (IGM) over $3\, \mathrm{Gyr}$ of cosmic time $1.8<z<5.4$ by comparing measurements of the Ly{\alpha} forest power spectrum to a suite of $\sim70$ hydrodynamical simulations. We…
A simple analytical model is used to calculate the X-ray heating of the IGM for a range of black hole masses. This process is efficient enough to decouple the spin temperature of the intergalactic medium from the cosmic microwave background…
In warm dark matter scenarios structure formation is suppressed on small scales with respect to the cold dark matter case, reducing the number of low-mass halos and the fraction of ionized gas at high redshifts and thus, delaying…
We focus on exploring the metal enrichment of the intergalactic medium (IGM) in Cold and Warm (1.5 and 3 keV) Dark Matter (DM) cosmologies, and the constraints this yields on the DM particle mass, using a semi-analytic model, Delphi, that…
We calculate the thermochemical equilibrium of the diffuse interstellar medium, including ionization by a photon flux F_{nu} from neutrino decay. The main heating mechanism considered is photoelectrons from grains and PAHs. For the studied…
Recent results from PAMELA and ATIC hint that O(TeV) dark matter (DM) is annihilating, in our galactic neighborhood, predominantly to leptons. The annihilation rate is much larger now than during freeze-out, one possible explanation of this…
Dark Matter annihilations after recombination and during the epoch of structure formation deposit energy in the primordial intergalactic medium, producing reionization and heating. We investigate the constraints that are imposed by the…
We sketch the average behaviour of the temperatures and densities of the main components of the $\Lambda$CDM universe after inflation. It is modelled as a perfect fluid with dark energy associated with the macroscopic effect of conformal…
A definite prediction from recent N-body/hydro simulations of the structure formation of the universe is the presence of a diffuse intergalactic medium (IGM) in a temperature range of 10^5 - 10^7 K. This hot phase of the IGM may account for…
The freeze-out of dark matter (DM) depends on the evolution of the DM temperature. The DM temperature does not have to follow the standard model one, when the elastic scattering is not sufficient to maintain the kinetic equilibrium. We…
We study the impact of inhomogeneous hydrogen reionization on the thermal evolution of the intergalactic medium (IGM) using hydrodynamic + radiative transfer simulations where reionization is completed either early (z ~ 9) or late (z ~ 6).…
Annihilating dark matter (DM) models offer promising avenues for future DM detection, in particular via modification of astrophysical signals. However when modelling such potential signals at high redshift the emergence of both dark matter…