The mass of the dark matter particle from theory and observations

TL;DR

This paper combines observational galaxy data with theoretical models to estimate the dark matter particle mass as between 1 and 2 keV, using linear evolution of density fluctuations and universal density profiles.

Contribution

It introduces a method to determine dark matter particle mass and properties from galaxy observations and linear theory, independent of specific particle models.

Findings

Dark matter particle mass estimated between 1 and 2 keV.

KeV dark matter produces cored density profiles.

WIMPs produce cusped profiles at small scales.

Abstract

We combine observed properties of galaxies as the core density and radius with the theoretical linear evolution of density fluctuations computed from first principles since the end of inflation till today. The halo radius r_0 is computed in terms of cosmological parameters. The theoretical density profiles rho(r)/rho(0) have an universal shape as a function of r/r_0 which reproduces the observations. We show that the linear approximation to the Boltzmann-Vlasov equation is valid for very large galaxies and correctly provides universal quantities which are common to all galaxies, as the surface density and density profile. By matching the theoretically computed surface density to its observed value we obtain (i) the decreasing of the phase-space density during the MD era (ii) the mass of the dark matter particle which turns to be between 1 and 2 keV and the decoupling temperature T_d which turns to be above 100 GeV (iii) the core vs. cusp discrimination: keV dark matter particles produce cored density profiles while wimps (m \sim 100 GeV, T_d \sim 5 GeV) produce cusped profiles at scales about 0.003 pc. These results are independent of the particle model and vary very little with the statistics of the dark matter particle. Non-universal galaxy quantities (which need to include non-linear effects as mergers and baryons) are reproduced in the linear approximation up to a factor of order one for the halo radius r_0, galaxy mass M_{gal}, halo central density rho_{0} and velocity dispersion sqrt{{\bar {v^2}}_{halo}} in the limiting case of large galaxies (both r_0 and M_{gal} large). This shows the power of the linear approximation scheme: although it cannot capture the whole content of the structure formation, it correctly provides universal quantities which as well as the main non-universal galaxy properties.