Related papers: Intergalactic medium heating by dark matter
Dark matter (DM) annihilation during hydrogen recombination (z ~ 1000) will alter the recombination history of the Universe, and affect the observed CMB temperature and polarization fluctuations. Unlike other astrophysical probes of DM,…
We describe the evolution of Dark Matter (DM) abundance from the very onset of its creation from inflaton decay under the assumption of an instantaneous reheating. Based on the initial conditions such as the inflaton mass and its decay…
During cosmic dawn, the thermal history of the universe is well studied, and a study of this era can give us some of the most useful insight into the universe before the recombination epoch. Its precise modeling and future high-precision…
The temperature of the diffuse, photo-heated intergalactic medium (IGM) depends on its reionization history because the thermal time scales are long. The widths of the hydrogen Lyman-alpha absorption lines seen in the spectra of distant…
We derived the influence of dark matter (DM) decays and annihilations on structure formation. The energy deposited by DM decays and annihilations into metal free halos both increases the gas temperature and enhances the formation of…
The 21-cm signal from the cosmic reionization epoch can shed light on the history of heating of the primordial intergalactic medium (IGM) at z~30-10. It has been suggested that X-rays from the first accreting black holes could significantly…
I point out that the sterile neutrinos suggested as candidates of "cool" Dark Matter will decay through their mixing with light neutrinos. This leads to an upper bound of about 200 keV on the mass of the sterile neutrinos, but might…
We study the mutual interaction between the dark sectors (dark matter and dark energy) of the Universe by resorting to the extended thermodynamics of irreversible processes and constrain the former with supernova type Ia data. As a…
Gas-rich dwarf galaxies located outside the virial radius of their host are relatively pristine systems and have ultra-low gas cooling rates. This makes them very sensitive to heat injection by annihilation or decay of dark matter (DM).…
We present new measurements of the thermal state of the intergalactic medium (IGM) at $z\sim2.4$ derived from absorption line profiles in the Ly$\alpha$ forest. We use a large set of high-resolution hydrodynamical simulations to calibrate…
We examine the extent to which the self-annihilation of supersymmetric neutralino dark matter, as well as light dark matter, influences the rate of heating, ionisation and Lyman-alpha pumping of interstellar hydrogen and helium and the…
We use measurements of the intergalactic medium (IGM) temperature from the Lyman-$\alpha$ forest to place new limits on models in which long-lived dark sector (DS) particles, with lifetimes longer than $10^{16}$ s, deposit energy into the…
The modeling of galaxy formation and reionization, two central issues of modern cosmology, relies on the accurate follow-up of the intergalactic medium (IGM). Unfortunately, owing to the complex nature of this medium, the differential…
In the first stages of inflationary reheating, the temperature of the radiation produced by inflaton decays is typically higher than the commonly defined reheating temperature $T_{RH} \sim (\Gamma_\phi M_P)^{1/2}$ where $\Gamma_\phi$ is the…
If dark matter is made up of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, the annihilation of these particles in halos results in energy being released, some of which is absorbed by gas, causing partial ionization and heating. Dark matter…
We trace the evolution of cosmic microwave background photons propagating through a reionized model universe. The reionization of the intergalactic medium is achieved by UV photons emitted from the decaying `hot' dark matter neutrinos. The…
We use a probabilistic method to compute the propagation of an ionization front corresponding to the re-ionization of the intergalactic medium in a LCDM cosmology, including both hydrogen and helium. The effects of radiative transfer…
We calculate constraints on radiatively decaying neutrinos from the recent detection of singly ionized helium in the diffuse intergalactic medium (IGM) at $z \simeq 3.3$. We consider a model in which neutrinos predominantly decay into…
We investigate the effects of dark matter annihilation on objects with masses close to the sub-stellar limit, finding that the minimum mass for stable hydrogen burning is larger than the $\sim0.075 M_\odot $ value predicted in the Standard…
The intergalactic medium (IGM) is the dominant reservoir of baryons at all cosmic epochs. We investigate the evolution of the IGM from z=2-0 in 48 Mpc/h, 110-million particle cosmological hydrodynamic simulations using three prescriptions…