Insights on Dark Matter from Hydrogen during Cosmic Dawn

Abstract

The origin and composition of the cosmological dark matter remain a mystery. However, upcoming 21-cm measurements during cosmic dawn, the period of the first stellar formation, can provide new clues on the nature of dark matter. During this era, the baryon-dark matter fluid is the slowest it will ever be, making it ideal to search for dark matter elastically scattering with baryons through massless mediators, such as the photon. Here we explore whether dark-matter particles with an electric "minicharge" can significantly alter the baryonic temperature and, thus, affect 21-cm observations. We find that the entirety of the dark matter cannot be minicharged at a significant level, lest it interferes with Galactic and extragalactic magnetic fields. However, if minicharged particles comprise a subpercent fraction of the dark matter, and have charges $\epsilon \sim 10^{-6}$---in units of the electron charge---and masses $m_\chi \sim 1-60$ MeV, they can significantly cool down the baryonic fluid, and be discovered in 21-cm experiments. We show how this scenario can explain the recent result by the EDGES collaboration, which requires a lower baryonic temperature than possible within the standard model, while remaining consistent with all current observations.