Can EDGES observation favour any dark matter model?

TL;DR

The paper examines whether the EDGES 21-cm signal can distinguish between different dark matter models, considering recent uncertainties in foreground modeling, and finds that current data cannot differentiate these models.

Contribution

It compares multiple dark matter models against EDGES data while accounting for new foreground parametrizations, highlighting the limitations of current observational constraints.

Findings

All tested dark matter models are statistically indistinguishable with current EDGES data.

Recent foreground modeling uncertainties significantly affect the interpretation of the 21-cm signal.

Current observations do not favor any specific dark matter model over others.

Abstract

The recent detection of the 21-cm absorption signal by the EDGES collaboration has been widely used to constrain the basic properties of dark matter particles. However, extracting the parameters of the 21-cm absorption signal relies on a chosen parametrization of the foreground radio emission. Recently, the new parametrizations of the foreground and systematics have been proposed, showing significant deviations of the 21-cm signal parameters from those assumed by the original EDGES paper. In this paper, we consider this new uncertainty, comparing the observed signal with the predictions of several dark matter models, including the widely used cold dark matter model, 1-3 keV warm dark matter models, and 7 keV sterile neutrino (SN7) model, capable of producing the reported 3.5 keV line. We show that all these dark matter models cannot be statistically distinguished using the available EDGES data.