Novel constraints on the particle nature of dark matter from stellar streams

Abstract

Tidal streams are highly sensitive to perturbations from passing dark matter (DM) subhalos and thus provide a means of measuring their abundance. In a recent paper, we analyzed the distribution of stars along the GD-1 stream with a combination of data from the Gaia satellite and the Pan-STARRS survey, and we demonstrated that the population of DM subhalos predicted by the cold dark matter (CDM) paradigm are necessary and sufficient to explain the perturbations observed in the linear density of stars. In this paper, we use the measurements of the subhalo mass function (SHMF) from the GD-1 data combined with a similar analysis of the Pal 5 stream to provide novel constraints on alternative DM scenarios that predict a suppression of the SHMF on scales smaller than the mass of dwarf galaxies, marginalizing over uncertainties in the slope and normalization of the unsuppressed SHMF and the susceptibility of DM subhalos in the inner Milky Way to tidal disruption. In particular, we derive a 95% lower limit on the mass of warm dark matter (WDM) thermal relics $m_{\mathrm{WDM}}>3.6\mathrm{keV}$ from streams alone that strengthens to $m_{\mathrm{WDM}}>6.2\mathrm{keV}$ when adding dwarf satellite counts. Similarly, we constrain the axion mass in ultra-light ("fuzzy") dark matter (FDM) models to be $m_{\mathrm{FDM}}>1.4\times 10^{-21}\mathrm{eV}$ from streams alone or $m_{\mathrm{FDM}}>2.2\times 10^{-21}\mathrm{eV}$ when adding dwarf satellite counts. Because we make use of simple approximate forms of the streams' SHMF measurement, our analysis is easy to replicate with other alternative DM models that lead to a suppression of the SHMF.

JCAP, in press. Code available to fully replicate the analysis at https://github.com/jobovy/dark-matter-constraints-from-stellar-streams

References in corpus (33)

• The Gaia mission
• Gaia Data Release 1. Summary of the astrometric, photometric, and survey properties
• Ultralight scalars as cosmological dark matter
• galpy: A Python Library for Galactic Dynamics
• Primordial Black Holes as Dark Matter
• Physical properties of molecular clouds for the entire Milky Way disk
• Dynamical modelling of the Galactic bulge and bar: the Milky Way's bar pattern speed, stellar, and dark matter mass distribution
• Detection of a 63 Degree Cold Stellar Stream in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Milky Way Satellite Census. III. Constraints on Dark Matter Properties from Observations of Milky Way Satellite Galaxies
• Disruption of Dark Matter Substructure: Fact or Fiction?
• Warm dark matter chills out: constraints on the halo mass function and the free-streaming length of dark matter with 8 quadruple-image strong gravitational lenses
• Lyman-alpha Constraints on Ultralight Scalar Dark Matter: Implications for the Early and Late Universe
• The Large-Misalignment Mechanism for the Formation of Compact Axion Structures: Signatures from the QCD Axion to Fuzzy Dark Matter
• KiDS-450: The tomographic weak lensing power spectrum and constraints on cosmological parameters
• SubHaloes going Notts: The SubHalo-Finder Comparison Project
• Shaken and Stirred: The Milky Way's Dark Substructures
• Joint constraints on thermal relic dark matter from strong gravitational lensing, the Lyman-$\alpha$ forest, and Milky Way satellites
• Dark Matter Constraints from a Unified Analysis of Strong Gravitational Lenses and Milky Way Satellite Galaxies
• Forensics of Subhalo-Stream Encounters: The Three Phases of Gap Growth
• The Subhalo Mass Function and Ultralight Bosonic Dark Matter
• The mechanics of tidal streams
• Gaps in globular cluster streams: giant molecular clouds can cause them too
• Substructure of fuzzy dark matter haloes
• Hidden Sector Hydrogen as Dark Matter: Small-scale Structure Formation Predictions and the Importance of Hyperfine Interactions
• Strong lensing signatures of self-interacting dark matter in low-mass halos
• Evidence of a population of dark subhalos from Gaia and Pan-STARRS observations of the GD-1 stream
• Constraints on the mass-concentration relation of cold dark matter halos with 11 strong gravitational lenses
• A closer look at the spur, blob, wiggle, and gaps in GD-1
• Don't cross the streams: caustics from Fuzzy Dark Matter
• Multiple Images and Flux Ratio Anomaly of Fuzzy Gravitational Lenses
• An extended Pal 5 stream in Gaia DR2
• And In The Darkness Unbind Them: High-Resolution Simulations of Dark Matter Subhalo Disruption in a Milky Way-like Tidal Field
• The spatial distribution of Milky Way satellites, gaps in streams and the nature of dark matter

Cited by in corpus (78)

• The NANOGrav 15-year Data Set: Search for Signals from New Physics
• Joint constraints on thermal relic dark matter from strong gravitational lensing, the Lyman-$\alpha$ forest, and Milky Way satellites
• Cosmological Constraints on Dark Matter Interactions with Ordinary Matter
• Probing the Small-Scale Matter Power Spectrum with Large-Scale 21-cm Data
• galstreams: A Library of Milky Way Stellar Stream Footprints and Tracks
• Probing Dark Low-mass Halos and Primordial Black Holes with Frequency-dependent Gravitational Lensing Dispersions of Gravitational Waves
• Evidence of a population of dark subhalos from Gaia and Pan-STARRS observations of the GD-1 stream
• A lensed radio jet at milli-arcsecond resolution II: Constraints on fuzzy dark matter from an extended gravitational arc
• Warm Dark Matter Constraints Using Milky-Way Satellite Observations and Subhalo Evolution Modeling
• New Roads to the Small-Scale Universe: Measurements of the Clustering of Matter with the High-Redshift UV Galaxy Luminosity Function
• Quantum fluctuations masquerade as halos: Bounds on ultra-light dark matter from quadruply-imaged quasars
• From Images to Dark Matter: End-To-End Inference of Substructure From Hundreds of Strong Gravitational Lenses
• Constraints on warm dark matter from UV luminosity functions of high-z galaxies with Bayesian model comparison
• Revisiting Dark Matter Freeze-in and Freeze-out through Phase-Space Distribution
• Asymmetric Surface Brightness Structure of Caustic Crossing Arc in SDSS J1226+2152: A Case for Dark Matter Substructure
• Towards a general parametrization of the warm dark matter halo mass function
• Dark atoms and composite dark matter
• Forecasts for Galaxy Formation and Dark Matter Constraints from Dwarf Galaxy Surveys
• $5\sigma$ tension between Planck cosmic microwave background and eBOSS Lyman-alpha forest and constraints on physics beyond $\Lambda$CDM
• On the Dynamical Heating of Dwarf Galaxies in a Fuzzy Dark Matter Halo
• Extracting the Subhalo Mass Function from Strong Lens Images with Image Segmentation
• Towards constraining warm dark matter with stellar streams through neural simulation-based inference
• Dark matter profiles of SPARC galaxies: a challenge to fuzzy dark matter
• Constraints on Ultralight Scalar Dark Matter with Quadratic Couplings
• Structure, Kinematics, and Observability of the Large Magellanic Cloud's Dynamical Friction Wake in Cold vs. Fuzzy Dark Matter
• Dark Matter in Astrophysics/Cosmology
• A new calibration method of sub-halo orbital evolution for semi-analytic models
• The e-TidalGCs Project: Modeling the extra-tidal features generated by Galactic globular clusters
• The halo mass function in alternative dark matter models
• Freeze-in Dark Matter via Light Dirac Neutrino Portal
• Dark matter as a heavy thermal hot relic
• Cosmological Simulations of Two-Component Wave Dark Matter
• DELVE-ing into the Jet: a thin stellar stream on a retrograde orbit at 30 kpc
• Local Group star formation in warm and self-interacting dark matter cosmologies
• Anomalous $U(1)$ Gauge Bosons as Light Dark Matter in String Theory
• Can ultralight dark matter explain the age-velocity dispersion relation of the Milky Way disc: A revised and improved treatment
• GD-1 Stellar Stream and Cocoon in the DESI Early Data Release
• Out of sight, out of mind? The impact of correlated clustering in substructure lensing
• TeV Dark Matter Searches in the Extragalactic Gamma-Ray Sky
• COZMIC. I. Cosmological Zoom-in Simulations with Initial Conditions Beyond Cold Dark Matter
• A giant thin stellar stream in the Coma Galaxy Cluster
• Unveiling cosmological information on small scales with line intensity mapping
• Mixed Warm Dark Matter Constraints using Milky Way Satellite Galaxy Counts
• On $N$-body simulations of globular cluster stream
• LMC-driven anisotropic boosts in stream--subhalo interactions
• EDGE: the puzzling ellipticity of Eridanus II's star cluster and its implications for dark matter at the heart of an ultra-faint dwarf
• Prospects for Detecting Gaps in Globular Cluster Stellar Streams in External Galaxies with the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
• Stellar streams and dark substructure: the diffusion regime
• Inferring subhalo effective density slopes from strong lensing observations with neural likelihood-ratio estimation
• Interlopers speak out: studying the dark universe using small-scale lensing anisotropies
• Mass classification of dark matter perturbers of stellar tidal streams
• Anticipating the XRISM search for the decay of resonantly produced sterile neutrino dark matter
• Gaps in stellar streams as a result of globular cluster fly-bys
• Prospects for disentangling dark matter with weak lensing
• Thermal keV dark matter in a gauged B-L model with cosmic inflation
• Signatures of Very Early Dark Energy in the Matter Power Spectrum
• Constraining Ultra Light Dark Matter with the Galactic Nuclear Star Cluster
• Fuzzy dark matter simulations
• Return of the Lepton Number: Sterile Neutrino Dark Matter Production and the Revival of the Shi-Fuller Mechanism
• Can radial motions in the stellar halo constrain the rate of change of mass in the Galaxy?
• Measurement of Substructure from the Kinematics of the GD-1 Stellar Stream
• Using dust to constrain dark matter models
• Interference in Fuzzy Dark Matter Filaments: Idealised Models and Statistics
• An analytic description of substructure-induced gravitational perturbations in stellar systems
• The cusp-halo relation
• Macromodel-free flux-ratio prediction in quadruply imaged quasars with local constraints from lensed arcs
• Towards characterizing dark matter subhalo perturbations in stellar streams with graph neural networks
• WIMP decay as a possible Warm Dark Matter model
• Role of prompt cusps in driving the core collapse of SIDM halos
• Excess of substructure due to primordial black holes
• Constraining the population of dark matter halo shapes using hierarchical inference with extragalactic stellar streams
• Warm, not Fuzzy: Generalized Ultralight Dark Matter Limits from Milky Way Satellites
• No Stream Left Unscathed: The imprint of a host galaxy
• Dark matter with excitable levels
• Simulating the complexity of the dark matter sheet II: halo and subhalo mass functions for non-cold dark matter models
• Core-halo scaling relations in self-interacting scalar field dark matter
• Non-halo structures and their effects on gravitationally lensed galaxies
• Probing the warm dark matter mass with [C II] intensity mapping