Constraining Warm Dark Matter with high-$z$ supernova lensing

Abstract

We propose a new method to constrain the warm dark matter (WDM) particle mass, $m_\chi$, based on the counts of multiply imaged, distant supernovae (SN) produced by strong lensing by intervening cosmological matter fluctuations. The counts are very sensitive to the WDM particle mass, assumed here to be $m_\chi=1, 1.5, 2$ keV. We use the analytic approach developed by Das & Ostriker to compute the probability density function of the cold dark matter (CDM) convergence ($\kappa$) on the lens plane; such method has been extensively tested against numerical simulations. We have extended this method generalizing it to the WDM case, after testing it against WDM $N$-body simulations. Using the observed cosmic star formation history we compute the probability for a distant SN to undergo a strong lensing event in different cosmologies. A minimum observing time of 2 yr (5 yr) is required for a future 100 square degrees survey reaching $z \approx 4$ ($z \approx 3$) to disentangle at 2$\sigma$ a WDM ($m_\chi=1$ keV) model from the standard CDM scenario. Our method is not affected by any astrophysical uncertainty (such as baryonic physics effects), and, in principle, it does not require any particular dedicated survey strategy, as it may come as a byproduct of a future SN survey.