Cosmic Microwave Background constraints of decaying dark matter particle properties
Abstract
If a component of cosmological dark matter is made up of massive particles - such as sterile neutrinos - that decay with cosmological lifetime to emit photons, the reionization history of the universe would be affected, and cosmic microwave background anisotropies can be used to constrain such a decaying particle model of dark matter. The optical depth depends rather sensitively on the decaying dark matter particle mass mdm, lifetime taudm, and the mass fraction of cold dark matter f that they account for in this model. Assuming that there are no other sources of reionization and using the WMAP 7-year data, we find that 250 eV < mdm < 1 MeV, whereas 2.23*103 yr < taudm < 1.23*1018 yr. The best fit values for mdm and taudm/f are 17.3 keV and 2.03*1016 yr respectively.
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