Cosmological constraints to dark matter with two- and many-body decays

TL;DR

This paper investigates how different dark matter decay scenarios affect the universe's expansion and uses observational data to constrain dark matter lifetime, ruling out certain decay models with high confidence.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive analysis of two- and many-body dark matter decays and derives new cosmological constraints on dark matter lifetime based on observational data.

Findings

Dark matter decay with high energy transfer is strongly constrained.

Lifetimes less than the universe's age are excluded for significant energy splitting.

Constraints tighten as energy transfer increases.

Abstract

We present a study of cosmological implications of generic dark matter decays. We consider two-body and many-body decaying scenarios. In the two-body case the massive particle has a possibly relativistic kick velocity and thus possesses a dynamical equation of state. This has implications to the expansion history of the universe. We use recent observational data from the cosmic microwave background, baryon acoustic oscillations and supernovae Type Ia to obtain constraints on the lifetime of the dark matter particle. We find that for an energy splitting where more than 40% of the dark matter particle energy is transferred to massless, relativistic particles in the two-body case, or more than 50% in the many-body case, lifetimes less than the age of the universe are excluded at more than 95% confidence. When the energy splitting falls to 10% the lifetime is constrained to be more than roughly half the age.