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Title: Constraints on Dark Matter Microphysics from the Milky Way Satellite Population

Journal Article · · The Astrophysical Journal. Letters (Online)

Alternatives to the cold, collisionless dark matter (DM) paradigm in which DM behaves as a collisional fluid generically suppress small-scale structure. Herein we use the observed population of Milky Way (MW) satellite galaxies to constrain the collisional nature of DM, focusing on DM–baryon scattering. We first derive conservative analytic upper limits on the velocity-independent DM–baryon scattering cross section by translating the upper bound on the lowest mass of halos inferred to host satellites into a characteristic cutoff scale in the linear matter power spectrum. We then confirm and improve these results through a detailed probabilistic inference of the MW satellite population that marginalizes over relevant astrophysical uncertainties. This yields 95% confidence upper limits on the DM–baryon scattering cross section of 6 × 10–30 cm2 (10–27 cm2) for DM particle masses mχ of 10 keV (10 GeV); these limits scale as mχ1/4 for mχ << 1 GeV and mχ for mχ >> 1 GeV. This analysis improves upon cosmological bounds derived from cosmic-microwave-background anisotropy measurements by more than three orders of magnitude over a wide range of DM masses, excluding regions of parameter space previously unexplored by other methods, including direct-detection experiments. Lastly, our work reveals a mapping between DM–baryon scattering and other alternative DM models, and we discuss the implications of our results for warm and fuzzy DM scenarios.

Research Organization:
Stanford Univ., CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-76SF00515
OSTI ID:
1530595
Journal Information:
The Astrophysical Journal. Letters (Online), Vol. 878, Issue 2; ISSN 2041-8213
Publisher:
Institute of Physics (IOP)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 101 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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The Dependence of Subhalo Abundance on Halo Concentration text January 2015
A New Faint Milky Way Satellite Discovered in the Pan-STARRS1 3 pi Survey text January 2015
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An Ultra-Faint Galaxy Candidate Discovered in Early Data from the Magellanic Satellites Survey text January 2016
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Ultralight scalars as cosmological dark matter text January 2016
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No Assembly Required: Mergers are Mostly Irrelevant for the Growth of Low-mass Dwarf Galaxies text January 2018
First Cosmological Constraint on the Effective Theory of Dark Matter-Proton Interactions text January 2018
Snake in the Clouds: A new nearby dwarf galaxy in the Magellanic bridge text January 2018
Calorimetric Dark Matter Detection With Galactic Center Gas Clouds text January 2018
The mass of the Milky Way from satellite dynamics text January 2018
Constraining Dark Matter candidates from structure formation text January 2000
Earth-mass dark-matter haloes as the first structures in the early Universe text January 2005

Cited By (10)

Direct detection of strongly interacting sub-GeV dark matter via electron recoils journal September 2019
Double dark matter vision: twice the number of compact-source lenses with narrow-line lensing and the WFC3 grism journal December 2019
Spatially Resolved Stellar Kinematics of the Ultra-diffuse Galaxy Dragonfly 44. II. Constraints on Fuzzy Dark Matter journal November 2019
Direct Detection of Strongly Interacting Sub-GeV Dark Matter via Electron Recoils text January 2019
(Not as) Big as a Barn: Upper Bounds on Dark Matter-Nucleus Cross Sections text January 2019
Constraining Nonthermal Dark Matter's Impact on the Matter Power Spectrum text January 2019
Dark matter capture in celestial objects: light mediators, self-interactions, and complementarity with direct detection journal October 2020
Probing the Small-Scale Matter Power Spectrum with Large-Scale 21-cm Data text January 2019
BICEP / Keck XII: Constraints on axion-like polarization oscillations in the cosmic microwave background text January 2020
Resonant Scattering between Dark Matter and Baryons: Revised Direct Detection and CMB Limits preprint January 2021

Figures / Tables (2)