Comment on "Is Dark Matter with Long-Range Interactions a Solution to All Small-Scale Problems of \Lambda CDM Cosmology?"

TL;DR

This paper critiques a proposed dark matter model with long-range interactions, showing it faces significant constraints from Big Bang Nucleosynthesis, questioning its viability as a solution to small-scale structure problems.

Contribution

It provides an analysis of the constraints on a dark matter model with neutrino-coupled vector bosons, highlighting issues from early universe nucleosynthesis.

Findings

The model is constrained by Big Bang Nucleosynthesis data.

Neutrino-vector boson coupling constants are restricted.

The proposed solution may not resolve small-scale problems effectively.

Abstract

In Phys. Rev. Lett. 109 (2012) 231301, van den Aarssen et al. attempt to solve all the small-scale structure problems in the cold-dark-matter scenario by introducing interaction between the dark-matter particle and an MeV-mass vector boson. In addition, the latter is coupled to ordinary neutrinos, and the neutrino-vector boson coupling constant 10^{-5} < g_nu < 0.1 is required for that purpose. We show that this dark-matter scenario is subject to restrictive constraints from Big Bang Nucleosynthesis.