Anthropic Explanation of the Dark Matter Abundance

TL;DR

Using a causal diamond measure and a crude observer formation model, the paper predicts dark matter abundance consistent with observations, showing larger dark matter ratios are less probable due to baryon effects.

Contribution

It provides a statistical prediction for dark matter abundance assuming an axion with a large decay constant, highlighting the impact of baryon-dark matter ratios on observer formation.

Findings

Prediction aligns with observed dark matter levels

Higher dark matter ratios are disfavored due to baryon effects

Prediction is robust against assumptions about observer formation in high dark matter universes

Abstract

I use Bousso's causal diamond measure to make a statistical prediction for the dark matter abundance, assuming an axion with a large decay constant f_a >> 10^{12} GeV. Using a crude approximation for observer formation, the prediction agrees well with observation: 30% of observers form in regions with less dark matter than we observe, while 70% of observers form in regions with more dark matter. Large values of the dark matter ratio are disfavored by an elementary effect: increasing the amount of dark matter while holding fixed the baryon to photon ratio decreases the number of baryons inside one horizon volume. Thus the prediction is rather insensitive to assumptions about observer formation in universes with much more dark matter than our own. The key assumption is that the number of observers per baryon is roughly independent of the dark matter ratio for ratios near the observed value.