Detection of Dark Matter Decay in the X-ray

Abstract

There exists considerable interest in dark matter candidates that can reduce cosmological structure at sub-galactic scales through a suppression of the power spectrum of primordial perturbations as well as have a primordial velocity distribution to produce cores in the smallest-scale dwarf halos. Light keV-mass-scale sterile neutrinos can be such a "warm" dark matter candidate and are still viable candidates in broad regions of their parameter space. We review the status of this candidate and the current constraints from its radiative decay in the X-ray and from structure formation. We also provide a forecast for the sensitivity of the International X-ray Observatory to this decay, which we show may have the ability to detect or exclude sterile neutrinos within its full parameter space of interest as a dark matter candidate.

8 pages, 1 figure; white paper submitted to the Astro 2010 Decadal Survey, Cosmology and Fundamental Physics Science

References in corpus (5)

• Five-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Cosmological Interpretation
• A Search for Electron Neutrino Appearance at the Delta m**2 ~ 1 eV**2 Scale
• New Limits on Sterile Neutrinos from Suzaku Observations of the Ursa Minor Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy
• Sterile Neutrino-Enhanced Supernova Explosions
• Delayed pulsar kicks from the emission of sterile neutrinos

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Dark Matter Candidates from Particle Physics and Methods of Detection
• Constraints on interacting dark energy models through cosmic chronometers and Gaussian process
• The search for decaying Dark Matter