Cosmological bounds on dark-matter-neutrino interactions

Abstract

We investigate the cosmological effects of a neutrino interaction with cold dark-matter. We postulate a neutrino that interacts with a "neutrino-interacting dark-matter" (NIDM) particle with an elastic-scattering cross section that either decreases with temperature as T2 or remains constant with temperature. The neutrino-dark-matter interaction results in a neutrino-dark-matter fluid with pressure, and this pressure results in diffusion-damped oscillations in the matter power spectrum, analogous to the acoustic oscillations in the baryon-photon fluid. We discuss the bounds from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey on the NIDM opacity (ratio of cross section to NIDM-particle mass) and compare with the constraint from observation of neutrinos from supernova 1987A. If only a fraction of the dark matter interacts with neutrinos, then NIDM oscillations may affect current cosmological constraints from measurements of galaxy clustering. We discuss how detection of NIDM oscillations would suggest a particle-antiparticle asymmetry in the dark-matter sector.

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