High resolution Lyman-{\alpha} forest constraints on dark matter-neutrino scattering

Abstract

We present new constraints on models of dark matter interacting with neutrino, based on high-resolution Lyman-$\alpha$ forest data. We perform a suite of full hydrodynamical simulations of these models, spanning a range of interaction strengths and thermal histories. We train an emulator on the simulation results. A Monte Carlo Markov Chain analysis yields an upper limit on the interaction strength of $u_{\nu \chi }\le 1.5\times 10^{-8}$ (95% C.L.), which is the strongest direct bound to date on such interactions. Our results exclude previous hints of non-zero interactions presented in the literature. We furthermore compare our results to those obtained by mapping warm dark matter constraints to other models with suppressed small-scale structure, and find that these methods would overestimate the constraining power for this model.

Comments: 19 pages, 7 figures, comments welcome