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Published December 2024 | Published
Journal Article Open

JWST Lensed quasar dark matter survey II: Strongest gravitational lensing limit on the dark matter free streaming length to date

  • 1. ROR icon University of California, Merced
  • 2. ROR icon University of Chicago
  • 3. ROR icon University of Toronto
  • 4. Brinson Prize Fellow
  • 5. ROR icon Stony Brook University
  • 6. ROR icon University of California, Los Angeles
  • 7. ROR icon Carnegie Institution for Science
  • 8. ROR icon University of California, Irvine
  • 9. ROR icon Andrés Bello University
  • 10. ROR icon Millennium Institute of Astrophysics
  • 11. ROR icon California Polytechnic State University
  • 12. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 13. ROR icon University of Liège
  • 14. ROR icon Ghent University
  • 15. ROR icon University of Southampton
  • 16. ROR icon Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe
  • 17. ROR icon Stockholm University
  • 18. ROR icon University of Valparaíso
  • 19. ROR icon Jet Propulsion Lab
  • 20. ROR icon Stanford University
  • 21. ROR icon SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Abstract

This is the second in a series of papers in which we use JWST Mid Infrared Instrument multiband imaging to measure the warm dust emission in a sample of 31 multiply imaged quasars, to be used as a probe of the particle nature of dark matter. We present measurements of the relative magnifications of the strongly lensed warm dust emission in a sample of nine systems. The warm dust region is compact and sensitive to perturbations by populations of haloes down to masses ∼10⁶ M⊙⁠. Using these warm dust flux-ratio measurements in combination with five previous narrow-line flux-ratio measurements, we constrain the halo mass function. In our model, we allow for complex deflector macromodels with flexible third- and fourth-order multipole deviations from ellipticity, and we introduce an improved model of the tidal evolution of subhaloes. We constrain a WDM model and find an upper limit on the half-mode mass of 10^(7.6)M⊙ at posterior odds of 10:1. This corresponds to a lower limit on a thermally produced dark matter particle mass of 6.1 keV. This is the strongest gravitational lensing constraint to date, and comparable to those from independent probes such as the Ly α forest and Milky Way satellite galaxies.

Copyright and License

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Acknowledgement

We thank Crystal Mannfolk, Greg Sloan, Blair Porterfield, and Henrik R. Larsson for help with observation planning. We thank Karl Gordon, Mattia Libralato, Jane Morrison, and Sarah Kendrew for their help in answering questions about the data reduction. We thank Marshall Perrin for helpful conversations about webbPSF.

This work is based on observations made with the NASA/ESA/CSA JWST. The data were obtained from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5–03127 for JWST. These observations are associated with programme 2046. Support for programme2046 was provided by NASA through a grant from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5–03127.

AN and TT acknowledge support from the NSF through AST-2205100 ‘Collaborative Research: Measuring the physical properties of DM with strong gravitational lensing’. The work of LAM and DS was carried out at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with NASA. TA acknowledges support from the Millennium Science Initiative ICN12_009, the ANID BASAL project FB210003 and ANID FONDECYT project number 1240105. DS acknowledges the support of the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique-FNRS, Belgium, under grant 4.4503.1. KKG thanks the Belgian Federal Science Policy Office (BELSPO) for the provision of financial support in the framework of the PRODEX Programme of the European Space Agency (ESA). VM acknowledges support from ANID FONDECYT Regular grant number 1231418 and Centro de Astrofísica de Valparaíso. VNB gratefully acknowledges assistance from a National Science Foundation (NSF) Research at Undergraduate Institutions (RUI) grant AST-1909297. Note that findings and conclusions do not necessarily represent views of the NSF. KNA is partially supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Theoretical Physics Program, Grants PHY-1915005 and PHY-2210283. AK was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) grant no. DE-SC0009937, by the UC Southern California Hub, with funding from the UC National Laboratories division of the University of California Office of the President, by the World Premier International Research Center Initiative (WPI), MEXT, Japan, and by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) KAKENHI Grant JP20H05853. SB acknowledges support from Stony Brook University. DG acknowledges support for this work provided by the Brinson Foundation through a Brinson Prize Fellowship grant, and from the Schmidt Futures organization through a Schmidt AI in Science Fellowship.

Funding

AN and TT acknowledge support from the NSF through AST-2205100 ‘Collaborative Research: Measuring the physical properties of DM with strong gravitational lensing’. The work of LAM and DS was carried out at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with NASA. TA acknowledges support from the Millennium Science Initiative ICN12_009, the ANID BASAL project FB210003 and ANID FONDECYT project number 1240105. DS acknowledges the support of the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique-FNRS, Belgium, under grant 4.4503.1. KKG thanks the Belgian Federal Science Policy Office (BELSPO) for the provision of financial support in the framework of the PRODEX Programme of the European Space Agency (ESA). VM acknowledges support from ANID FONDECYT Regular grant number 1231418 and Centro de Astrofísica de Valparaíso. VNB gratefully acknowledges assistance from a National Science Foundation (NSF) Research at Undergraduate Institutions (RUI) grant AST-1909297. Note that findings and conclusions do not necessarily represent views of the NSF. KNA is partially supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Theoretical Physics Program, Grants PHY-1915005 and PHY-2210283. AK was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) grant no. DE-SC0009937, by the UC Southern California Hub, with funding from the UC National Laboratories division of the University of California Office of the President, by the World Premier International Research Center Initiative (WPI), MEXT, Japan, and by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) KAKENHI Grant JP20H05853. SB acknowledges support from Stony Brook University. DG acknowledges support for this work provided by the Brinson Foundation through a Brinson Prize Fellowship grant, and from the Schmidt Futures organization through a Schmidt AI in Science Fellowship.

Data Availability

This work was based on JWST MIRI imaging that becomes publicly available after a 1-year proprietary period. All software used in the DM inference is publicly available, and intermediate data products may be made available upon reasonable request.

Supplemental Material

Supplementary data (PDF).

 

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Additional details

Created:
November 21, 2024
Modified:
November 21, 2024