Dark acoustic oscillations: Imprints on the matter power spectrum and the halo mass function

Abstract

Many non-minimal dark matter scenarios lead to oscillatory features in the matter power spectrum induced by interactions either within the dark sector or with particles from the standard model. Observing such dark acoustic oscillations would therefore be a major step towards understanding dark matter. We investigate what happens to oscillatory features during the process of nonlinear structure formation. We show that at the level of the power spectrum, oscillations are smoothed out by nonlinear mode coupling, gradually disappearing towards lower redshifts. In the halo mass function, however, the same oscillations remain visible until the present epoch. As a consequence, dark acoustic oscillations could be detectable in observations that are either based on the halo mass function or on the high-redshift power spectrum. We investigate the effect of such oscillations on different observables, namely, the cluster mass function, the stellar-to-halo mass relation, and the Lyman-$\alpha$ flux power spectrum. We find that dark acoustic oscillations remain visible in all of these observables, but they are very extended and of low amplitude, making it challenging to detect them as distinct features in the data.

Published in MNRAS

References in corpus (17)

• Dark Matter and Dark Radiation
• Can sterile neutrinos be the dark matter?
• A mass-dependent density profile for dark matter haloes including the influence of galaxy formation
• The galaxy cluster mass scale and its impact on cosmological constraints from the cluster population
• Discreteness effects in simulations of Hot/Warm dark matter
• Can sterile neutrinos be ruled out as warm dark matter candidates?
• The stellar mass-halo mass relation of isolated field dwarfs: a critical test of $\Lambda$CDM at the edge of galaxy formation
• Constraints from Ly-$\alpha$ forests on non-thermal dark matter including resonantly-produced sterile neutrinos
• Non-linear structure formation and the acoustic scale
• Cosmological bounds on dark matter-neutrino interactions
• Scattering, Damping, and Acoustic Oscillations: Simulating the Structure of Dark Matter Halos with Relativistic Force Carriers
• Voronoi volume function: A new probe of cosmology and galaxy evolution
• Linear scale bounds on dark matter--dark radiation interactions and connection with the small scale crisis of cold dark matter
• The extended ROSAT-ESO Flux-Limited X-ray Galaxy Cluster Survey (REFLEX II) VII The Mass Function of Galaxy Clusters
• ETHOS -- An effective parametrization and classification for structure formation: the non-linear regime at $z\gtrsim 5$
• The halo mass function and inner structure of ETHOS haloes at high redshift
• Constraining cosmology with the velocity function of low-mass galaxies

Cited by in corpus (12)

• Constraints on warm dark matter from UV luminosity functions of high-z galaxies with Bayesian model comparison
• Mixed dark matter: matter power spectrum and halo mass function
• A new life for sterile neutrino dark matter after the pandemic
• Constraints on dark matter-neutrino scattering from the Milky-Way satellites and subhalo modeling for dark acoustic oscillations
• BEoRN: A fast and flexible framework to simulate the epoch of reionisation and cosmic dawn
• Exploring Mirror Twin Higgs Cosmology with Present and Future Weak Lensing Surveys
• COZMIC. I. Cosmological Zoom-in Simulations with Initial Conditions Beyond Cold Dark Matter
• Probing Dark Relativistic Species and Their Interactions with Dark Matter through CMB and 21cm surveys
• Constraining Hot Dark Matter Sub-Species with Weak Lensing and the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation
• Enhanced Small-Scale Structure in the Cosmic Dark Ages
• Cosmological constraints on mass-varying dark matter
• Imprints of fermionic and bosonic mixed dark matter on the 21-cm signal at cosmic dawn