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Constraints on the identity of the dark matter from strong gravitational lenses

Li, R.; Frenk, C.S.; Cole, S.; Gao, L.; Bose, S.; Hellwing, W.A.

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Authors

R. Li

L. Gao

S. Bose

W.A. Hellwing



Abstract

The cold dark matter (CDM) cosmological model unambiguously 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 Dark Matter (WDM) particles, 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 100 strong lens systems with a detection limit of Mlow = 107 h−1 M⊙ 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.

Citation

Li, R., Frenk, C., Cole, S., Gao, L., Bose, S., & Hellwing, W. (2016). Constraints on the identity of the dark matter from strong gravitational lenses. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 460(1), 363-372. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stw939

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Apr 19, 2016
Online Publication Date Apr 21, 2016
Publication Date Jul 21, 2016
Deposit Date May 24, 2016
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Print ISSN 0035-8711
Electronic ISSN 1365-2966
Publisher Royal Astronomical Society
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 460
Issue 1
Pages 363-372
DOI https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stw939

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Copyright Statement
This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society ©: 2016 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.





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