Forecasts for Warm Dark Matter from Photometric Galaxy Surveys

TL;DR

This paper forecasts the ability of current and future photometric galaxy surveys to constrain warm dark matter particle mass using the galaxy angular power spectrum, employing a modified Halo Model for nonlinear clustering.

Contribution

It introduces a Fisher matrix forecast method combined with a modified Halo Model to estimate WDM mass sensitivity from galaxy surveys.

Findings

LSST could set a lower bound of 647 eV on WDM mass.

DES could set a lower bound of 126 eV on WDM mass.

The method forecasts constraints using the galaxy angular power spectrum.

Abstract

We present a Fisher matrix forecast for the sensitivity on the mass of a thermal warm dark matter (WDM) particle from current (DES-like) and future (LSST-like) photometric galaxy surveys using the galaxy angular power spectrum. We model the nonlinear clustering using a modified Halo Model proposed to account for WDM effects. We estimate that from this observable alone a lower bound of $m_{\text{wdm}}>647$\,eV ($m_{\text{wdm}}>126$\,eV) for the LSST (DES) case could be obtained.