Cannibal domination and the matter power spectrum

Abstract

Decoupled hidden sectors can easily and generically result in a period of cannibal domination, during which the dominant component of the Universe has an equation of state intermediate between radiation and matter due to self-heating by number-changing interactions. We present for the first time the consequences of a cannibal-dominated era prior to big bang nucleosynthesis for structure formation on small scales. We find that an early cannibal-dominated era imprints a characteristic peak on the dark matter power spectrum, with scale and amplitude directly determined by the mass, lifetime, and number-changing interaction strength of the cannibal field. This enhancement to the small-scale matter power spectrum will generate early-forming dark matter microhalos, and we provide a detailed and transparent map between the properties of the cannibal species and the characteristic mass and formation time of these structures. These relations demonstrate how the internal workings of a hidden sector leave a potentially observable imprint on the matter power spectrum even if dark matter has no direct couplings to the Standard Model.

arXiv comment5 pages + appendices, 4 figures; matches version accepted in PRD

References in corpus (55)

• Cosmological Perturbation Theory in the Synchronous vs. Conformal Newtonian Gauge
• Cosmological Perturbation Theory in the Synchronous and Conformal Newtonian Gauges
• Small Scale Cosmological Perturbations: An Analytic Approach
• Largest temperature of the radiation era and its cosmological implications
• Wino Cold Dark Matter from Anomaly-Mediated SUSY Breaking
• Earth-mass dark-matter haloes as the first structures in the early Universe
• Asymmetric Inflationary Reheating and the Nature of Mirror Universe
• MeV-scale reheating temperature and thermalization of oscillating neutrinos by radiative and hadronic decays of massive particles
• Bounds on very low reheating scenarios after Planck
• The first WIMPy halos
• Thermal Relics in Hidden Sectors
• The Small-Scale Power Spectrum of Cold Dark Matter
• Self-Interacting Dark Matter from a Non-Abelian Hidden Sector
• Forbidden Dark Matter
• Effects of cold dark matter decoupling and pair annihilation on cosmological perturbations
• New Dark Matter Physics: Clues from Halo Structure
• Cosmological Moduli and the Post-Inflationary Universe: A Critical Review
• Constraints on Self-Interacting Dark Matter
• Reheating Effects in the Matter Power Spectrum and Implications for Substructure
• Thermal Dark Matter From A Highly Decoupled Sector
• Cannibal Dark Matter
• PeV-Scale Dark Matter as a Thermal Relic of a Decoupled Sector
• Hidden SU(N) Glueball Dark Matter
• Freeze-In Dark Matter with Displaced Signatures at Colliders
• Pulsar Timing Probes of Primordial Black Holes and Subhalos
• Co-Decaying Dark Matter
• Chilly Dark Sectors and Asymmetric Reheating
• Self-Interacting Dark Matter from the Hidden Heterotic-String Sector
• SIMPle Dark Matter: Self-Interactions and keV Lines
• Non-thermal Histories and Implications for Structure Formation
• The Dark Matter Annihilation Boost from Low-Temperature Reheating
• Gravitational Lensing Signatures of Axion Dark Matter Minihalos in Highly Magnified Stars
• Phases of Cannibal Dark Matter
• Non-Abelian Dark Forces and the Relic Densities of Dark Glueballs
• Reheating the Standard Model from a hidden sector
• Observability of Dark Matter Substructure with Pulsar Timing Correlations
• Concentrated Dark Matter: Enhanced Small-scale Structure from Co-Decaying Dark Matter
• Imprints of the Early Universe on Axion Dark Matter Substructure
• Structure Formation during an early period of matter domination
• Dark Matter Targets for Axion-like Particle Searches
• Impeded Dark Matter
• Predicting the density profiles of the first halos
• Annihilation Signatures of Hidden Sector Dark Matter Within Early-Forming Microhalos
• Breaking a dark degeneracy: The gamma-ray signature of early matter domination
• Cannibal Dark Matter and Large Scale Structure
• Bringing Isolated Dark Matter Out of Isolation: Late-time Reheating and Indirect Detection
• Long-lived Light Mediator to Dark Matter and Primordial Small Scale Spectrum
• Charged Planckian Interacting Dark Matter
• Tidal evolution of dark matter annihilation rates in subhalos
• Evolution of dark matter microhalos through stellar encounters
• Freezing In, Heating Up, and Freezing Out: Predictive Nonthermal Dark Matter and Low-Mass Direct Detection
• Reheating in two-sector cosmology
• Ballistic Dark Matter oscillates above $\Lambda$CDM
• Reproductive Freeze-In of Self-Interacting Dark Matter
• Evolution of the phase-space density and the Jeans scale for dark matter derived from the Vlasov-Einstein equation

Cited by in corpus (24)

• The First Three Seconds: a Review of Possible Expansion Histories of the Early Universe
• Gravitational Waves from Global Cosmic Strings and Cosmic Archaeology
• Gravitational waves from dark matter isocurvature
• Scattering searches for dark matter in subhalos: neutron stars, cosmic rays, and old rocks
• Turn up the volume: Listening to phase transitions in hot dark sectors
• Dark Matter Microhalos From Simplified Models
• Cosmology Intertwined: A Review of the Particle Physics, Astrophysics, and Cosmology Associated with the Cosmological Tensions and Anomalies
• Cannibalism's lingering imprint on the matter power spectrum
• Smallest Remnants of Early Matter Domination
• Dark Matter Microhalos in the Solar Neighborhood: Pulsar Timing Signatures of Early Matter Domination
• Constraining axion and compact dark matter with interstellar medium heating
• The Effects Of Relativistic Hidden Sector Particles on the Matter Power Spectrum
• Large $N$-ightmare Dark Matter
• Cannibal dark matter decoupled from standard model: cosmological constraints
• How an era of kination impacts substructure and the dark matter annihilation rate
• Dark Matter from Dark Glueball Dominance
• Gravothermalizing into primordial black holes, boson stars, and cannibal stars
• Using Gravitational Wave Signals to Disentangle Early Matter Dominated Epochs
• 21-cm Constraints on Dark Matter Annihilation after an Early Matter-Dominated Era
• Freezing-in Cannibal Dark Sectors
• The cusp-halo relation
• Limits on Early Matter Domination from the Isotropic Gamma-Ray Background
• Cosmology of Single Species Hidden Dark Matter
• Bispectrum of induced gravitational waves in the poltergeist mechanism