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Severely Constraining Dark Matter Interpretations of the 21-cm Anomaly

3 Pith papers cite this work. Polarity classification is still indexing.

3 Pith papers citing it
abstract

The EDGES Collaboration has recently reported the detection of a stronger-than-expected absorption feature in the global 21-cm spectrum, centered at a frequency corresponding to a redshift of z ~ 17. This observation has been interpreted as evidence that the gas was cooled during this era as a result of scattering with dark matter. In this study, we explore this possibility, applying constraints from the cosmic microwave background, light element abundances, Supernova 1987A, and a variety of laboratory experiments. After taking these constraints into account, we find that the vast majority of the parameter space capable of generating the observed 21-cm signal is ruled out. The only range of models that remains viable is that in which a small fraction, ~ 0.3-2%, of the dark matter consists of particles with a mass of ~ 10-80 MeV and which couple to the photon through a small electric charge, epsilon ~ 10^{-6}-10^{-4}. Furthermore, in order to avoid being overproduced in the early universe, such models must be supplemented with an additional depletion mechanism, such as annihilations through a L_{\mu}-L_{\tau} gauge boson or annihilations to a pair of rapidly decaying hidden sector scalars.

years

2025 3

verdicts

UNVERDICTED 3

representative citing papers

Letter of Intent: The Forward Physics Facility

hep-ex · 2025-10-30 · unverdicted · novelty 5.0

Proposes construction of the Forward Physics Facility at the HL-LHC with four complementary detectors to exploit forward neutrinos and new-particle fluxes for neutrino, QCD, astroparticle, and dark-matter measurements.

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