Abstract
We present constraints on the mass of warm dark matter (WDM) particles from a combined analysis of the matter power spectrum inferred from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Lyman- flux power spectrum at , cosmic microwave background data, and the galaxy power spectrum. We obtain a lower limit of () if the WDM consists of sterile neutrinos and () for early decoupled thermal relics. If we combine this bound with the constraint derived from x-ray flux observations of the Coma cluster, we find that the allowed sterile neutrino mass is (in the standard production scenario). Adding constraints based on x-ray fluxes from the Andromeda galaxy, we find that dark matter particles cannot be sterile neutrinos, unless they are produced by a nonstandard mechanism (resonant oscillations, coupling with the inflaton) or get diluted by a large entropy release.
- Received 1 June 2006
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.97.071301
©2006 American Physical Society