Sensitivity of the Hongmeng 21cm experiment to scattering dark matter

Abstract

Scattering between dark matter and baryons can cool the intergalactic medium temperature and deepen the 21cm signal. Such interactions have been proposed to explain the unusually deep 21cm absorption signal reported by EDGES in 2018. We explore the potential to detect dark matter - baryon scattering with the Hongmeng project, an upcoming Moon-orbiting satellite experiment dedicated to measuring the global 21cm signal between redshifts $11-46$. We self-consistently forward-model the simulated sky-temperature data, jointly varying the astrophysical and foreground models. We show that even with a very conservative observational strategy in which the experiment only takes data when the Earth and the Sun are both shielded by the Moon, Hongmeng can tighten the current constraints on the cross section of dark matter - baryon scattering ${\sigma }_0$ by a factor of 39 after the full mission, which lasts for five years. The prospective upper limit on ${\sigma }_0$ can reach $5.4\times 10^{-43}\mathrm{c}{\mathrm{m}}^2$ for dark matter masses between 0.1 MeV and 0.3 GeV. Even after only one month of operation, an improvement by a factor of 4 relative to current ${\sigma }_0$ limits can be expected.

Comments: Version accepted by A&A, 9 pages, 3 figures, 1 table. We now use 7 FG terms rather than 5 as in our initial version, results changed