High resolution Lyman-α forest constraints on dark matter-neutrino scattering
Abstract
We present new constraints on models of dark matter interacting with neutrino, based on high-resolution Lyman-α forest data. We perform a suite of full hydrodynamical simulations of these models, spanning a range of interaction strengths and thermal histories. We train an emulator on the simulation results. A Monte Carlo Markov Chain analysis yields an upper limit on the interaction strength of uνχ ≤1.5×10−8 (95% C.L.), which is the strongest direct bound to date on such interactions. Our results exclude previous hints of non-zero interactions presented in the literature. We furthermore compare our results to those obtained by mapping warm dark matter constraints to other models with suppressed small-scale structure, and find that these methods would overestimate the constraining power for this model.
Related
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BibTeX
@misc{mosbech2026high,
title = {{High resolution Lyman-α forest constraints on dark matter-neutrino scattering}},
author = {Markus R. Mosbech and Olga Garcia-Gallego and Vid Iršič and Matteo Viel and Julien Lesgourgues},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2607.15020},
eprint = {2607.15020},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.15020},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - High resolution Lyman-α forest constraints on dark matter-neutrino scattering
AU - Markus R. Mosbech
AU - Olga Garcia-Gallego
AU - Vid Iršič
AU - Matteo Viel
AU - Julien Lesgourgues
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/02
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2607.15020
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.15020
AB - We present new constraints on models of dark matter interacting with neutrino, based on high-resolution Lyman-α forest data. We perform a suite of full hydrodynamical simulations of these models, spanning a range of interaction strengths and thermal histories. We train an emulator on the simulation results. A Monte Carlo Markov Chain analysis yields an upper limit on the interaction strength of u_νχ ≤1.5×10^−8 (95% C.L.), which is the strongest direct bound to date on such interactions. Our results exclude previous hints of non-zero interactions presented in the literature. We furthermore compare our results to those obtained by mapping warm dark matter constraints to other models with suppressed small-scale structure, and find that these methods would overestimate the constraining power for this model.
ER -