Ran Li, Carlos S. Frenk, Shaun Cole, Liang Gao, Sownak Bose, Wojciech A. Hellwing

The cold dark matter (CDM) cosmological model unambigously predicts that a large number of haloes should survive as subhaloes when they are accreted into a larger halo. The CDM model would be ruled out if such substructures were shown not to exist. By contrast, if the dark matter consists of warm particles (WDM), then below a threshold mass that depends on the particle mass far fewer substructures would be present. Finding subhaloes below a certain mass would then rule out warm particle masses below some value. Strong gravitational lensing provides a clean method to measure the subhalo mass function through distortions in the structure of Einstein rings and giant arcs.Using mock lensing observations constructed from high-resolution N-body simulations, we show that measurements of approximately 20 strong lens systems with a detection limit of $10^7 h^{-1} M_{\odot}$ would clearly distinguish CDM from WDM in the case where this consists of 7 keV sterile neutrinos such as those that might be responsible for the 3.5 keV X-ray emission line recently detected in galaxies and clusters. Donate to arXiv

Claudia de Rham, Andrew J. Tolley, Shuang-Yong Zhou

The target space of a nonlinear sigma model is usually required to be positive definite to avoid ghosts. We introduce a unique class of nonlinear sigma models where the target space metric has a Lorentzian signature, thus the associated group being non-compact. We show that the would-be ghost associated with the negative direction is fully projected out by 2 second-class constraints, and there exist stable solutions in this class of models. This result also has important implications for Lorentz--invariant massive gravity: There exist stable nontrivial vacua in massive gravity that are free from any linear vDVZ--discontinuity and a $\Lambda_2$ decoupling limit can be defined on these vacua. Donate to arXiv

G. De Zotti, M. Negrello, G. Castex, A. Lapi, M. Bonato

We review aspects of cosmic microwave background spectral distortions which do not appear to have been fully explored in the literature. In particular, implications of recent evidences of heating of the intergalactic medium (IGM) by feedback from active galactic nuclei are investigated. Taking also into account the IGM heating associated to structure formation, we argue that values of the y parameter of several times 10^(-6), i.e. a factor of a few below the COBE/FIRAS upper limit, are to be expected. The Compton scattering by the re-ionized plasma also re-processes primordial Bose Einstein-type distortions, reshaping them; hence no pure Bose-Einstein-like distortions are to be expected. An assessment of Galactic and extragalactic foregrounds, taking into account the latest results from the Planck satellite as well as the contributions from the strong CII and CO lines from star-forming galaxies demonstrates that the foreground subtraction accurate enough to fully exploit the PIXIE sensitivity will be extremely challenging. Motivated by this fact we also discuss methods to detect spectral distortions not requiring absolute measurements and show that accurate determinations of the frequency spectrum of the CMB dipole amplitude may improve over COBE/FIRAS limits on distortion parameters. The estimated amplitude of the Cosmic Infrared Background (CIB) dipole might be detectable by careful analyses of Planck maps at the highest frequencies. Thus Planck might provide interesting constraints on the CIB intensity, currently known with a 30% uncertainty. Donate to arXiv

Francis-Yan Cyr-Racine, Kris Sigurdson, Jesus Zavala, Torsten Bringmann, Mark Vogelsberger, Christoph Pfrommer, (2) Caltech, (3) IAS Princeton, (4) UBC, (5) Dark Cosmology Centre, (6) UIO, (7) MIT, (8) HITS)

We formulate an effective theory of structure formation (ETHOS) that enables cosmological structure formation to be computed in almost any microphysical model of dark matter physics. This framework maps the detailed microphysical theories of particle dark matter interactions into the physical effective parameters that shape the linear matter power spectrum and the self-interaction transfer cross section of non-relativistic dark matter. These are the input to structure formation simulations, which follow the evolution of the cosmological and galactic dark matter distributions. Models with similar effective parameters in ETHOS but with different dark particle physics would nevertheless result in similar dark matter distributions. We present a general method to map an ultraviolet complete or effective field theory of low energy dark matter physics into parameters that affect the linear matter power spectrum and carry out this mapping for several representative particle models. We further propose a simple but useful choice for characterizing the dark matter self-interaction transfer cross section that parametrizes self-scattering in structure formation simulations. Taken together, these effective parameters in ETHOS allow the classification of dark matter theories according to their structure formation properties rather than their intrinsic particle properties, paving the way for future simulations to span the space of viable dark matter physics relevant for structure formation. Donate to arXiv

Syksy Rasanen, Jussi Valiviita, Ville Kosonen

We constrain deviations of the form $T\propto (1+z)^{1+\epsilon}$ from the standard redshift-temperature relation, corresponding to modifying distance duality as $D_L=(1+z)^{2(1+\epsilon)} D_A$. We consider a consistent model, in which both the background and perturbation equations are changed. For this purpose, we introduce a species of dark radiation particles to which photon energy density is transferred, and assume $\epsilon\ge0$. The Planck 2015 release high multipole temperature plus low multipole data give the limit $\epsilon<4.5\times 10^{-3}$ at 95% C.L. The main obstacle to improving this CMB-only result is strong degeneracy between $\epsilon$ and the physical matter densities $\omega_{\rm b}$ and $\omega_{\rm c}$. A constraint on deuterium abundance improves the limit to $\epsilon<1.8\times 10^{-3}$. Adding the Planck high-multipole CMB polarisation and BAO data leads to a small improvement; with this maximal dataset we obtain $\epsilon<1.3\times 10^{-3}$. This dataset constrains the present dark radiation energy density to at most 12% of the total photon plus dark radiation density. Finally, we discuss the degeneracy between dark radiation and the effective number of relativistic species $N_{\rm eff}$, and consider the impact of dark radiation perturbations on the results. Donate to arXiv

Mark Vogelsberger, Jesus Zavala, Francis-Yan Cyr-Racine, 4), Christoph Pfrommer, Torsten Bringmann, Kris Sigurdson, 8) ((1) MIT, (2) Dark Cosmology Centre, (3) Harvard, (4) Caltech, (5) HITS, (6) UIO, (7) IAS Princeton, (8) UBC)

We present the first simulations within an effective theory of structure formation (ETHOS), which includes the effect of interactions between dark matter and dark radiation on the linear initial power spectrum and dark matter self-interactions during non-linear structure formation. We simulate a Milky Way-like halo in four different dark matter models in addition to the cold dark matter case. Our highest resolution simulation has a particle mass of $2.8\times 10^4\,{\rm M}_\odot$ and a softening length of $72.4\,{\rm pc}$. We demonstrate that all alternative models have only a negligible impact on large scale structure formation and behave on those scales like cold dark matter. On galactic scales, however, the models significantly affect the structure and abundance of subhaloes due to the combined effects of small scale primordial damping in the power spectrum and the late time self-interaction rate in the center of subhaloes. We derive an analytic mapping from the primordial damping scale in the power spectrum to the cutoff scale in the halo mass function and the kinetic decoupling temperature. We demonstrate that it is possible to find models within this extended effective framework that can alleviate the too-big-to-fail and missing satellite problems simultaneously, and possibly the core-cusp problem. Furthermore, the primordial power spectrum cutoff of our models naturally creates a diversity in the circular velocity profiles of haloes, which is larger than that found for cold dark matter simulations. We also show that the parameter space of models can be constrained by contrasting model predictions to astrophysical observations. For example, some of our models may be challenged by the missing satellite problem if baryonic processes were to be included and even over-solve the too-big-to-fail problem; thus ruling them out. Donate to arXiv

Matt Visser

So-called "Buchert averaging" is actually a coarse-graining procedure, where fine detail is "smeared out" due to limited spatio-temporal resolution. For technical reasons, (to be explained herein), "averaging" is not really an appropriate term, and I shall consistently describe the process as a "coarse-graining". Because Einstein gravity is nonlinear the coarse-grained Einstein tensor is typically not equal to the Einstein tensor of the coarse-grained spacetime geometry. The discrepancy can be viewed as an "effective" stress-energy, and this "effective" stress-energy often violates the classical energy conditions. To keep otherwise messy technical issues firmly under control, I shall work with conformal-FLRW (CFLRW) cosmologies. These CFLRW-based models are particularly tractable, and are also particularly attractive observationally: the CMB is not distorted. In this CFLRW context one can prove some rigorous theorems regarding the interplay between Buchert coarse-graining, tracelessness of the effective stress-energy, and the classical energy conditions. Donate to arXiv

Peter W. Graham, David E. Kaplan, Jeremy Mardon, Surjeet Rajendran, William A. Terrano

The mass of the dark matter particle is unknown, and may be as low as ~$10^{-22}$ eV. The lighter part of this range, below ~eV, is relatively unexplored both theoretically and experimentally but contains an array of natural dark matter candidates. An example is the relaxion, a light boson predicted by cosmological solutions to the hierarchy problem. One of the few generic signals such light dark matter can produce is a time-oscillating, EP-violating force. We propose searches for this using accelerometers, and consider in detail the examples of torsion balances, atom interferometry, and pulsar timing. These approaches have the potential to probe large parts of unexplored parameter space in the next several years. Thus such accelerometers provide radically new avenues for the direct detection of dark matter. Donate to arXiv