News & Events

Lyman-Alpha Constraints on Cosmic Heating from Dark Matter Annihilation and Decay

In this talk, I will discuss new constraints on decaying and annihilating dark matter using Lyman-Alpha forest measurements of the intergalactic medium (IGM) temperature, derived by requiring that the energy injected into the IGM from dark matter not overheat the IGM at late times. In this work, we improve upon previous analyses by using the recently developed DarkHistory code package, which self-consistently takes into account additional photoionization and photoheating processes due to reionization and DM sources. Our constraints are robust to the uncertainties of reionization and competitive with leading limits on sub-GeV dark matter that decays preferentially to electrons.

McDonald Insititute seminars bring together experimental and theoretical astroparticle physicists and astronomers. They are held approximately fortnightly, September to November and January to March, and on an ad hoc basis outside of term. They currently take place on Tuesdays at 2:30 PM on Zoom. Contact Aaron Vincent if you would like to attend.

https://www.physics.queensu.ca/facultysites/vincent/seminars/