Comparison of Low-Redshift Lyman- α Forest Observations to Hydrodynamical Simulations with Dark Photon Dark Matter

Bolton, James S.; Caputo, Andrea; Liu, Hongwan; Viel, Matteo

Abstract

Recent work has suggested that an additional ≲6.9 eV per baryon of heating in the intergalactic medium is needed to reconcile hydrodynamical simulations with Lyman-α forest absorption line widths at redshift z≃0.1. Resonant conversion of dark photon dark matter into low frequency photons is a viable source of such heating. We perform the first hydrodynamical simulations including dark photon heating and show that dark photons with mass mA′∼8×10-14 eV c-2 and kinetic mixing ϵ∼5×10-15 can alleviate the heating excess. A prediction of this model is a nonstandard thermal history for underdense gas at z≳3.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Oct 13, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Nov 18, 2022
• Publication Date: Nov 18, 2022
• Deposit Date: Nov 18, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 24, 2022
• Journal: Physical Review Letters
• Print ISSN: 0031-9007
• Electronic ISSN: 1079-7114
• Publisher: American Physical Society (APS)
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 129
• Issue: 21
• Article Number: 211102
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.129.211102
• Keywords: General Physics and Astronomy
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/13754369
• Publisher URL: https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.211102