Simulation-based inference on warm dark matter from HERA forecasts

2024/12/13 by Quentin Decant, Decant, Quentin, Androniki Dimitriou +5 · 4 citations
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Computational Physics and Python Applications #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO) #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #FOS: Physical sciences #Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)

paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2412.10310

openalex publication_date 2024/12/13 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

The redshifted 21cm signal from Cosmic Dawn promises to open a new window\ninto the early history of our universe and enable the probing of an\nunprecedented comoving survey volume. In this work, we revisit the imprint of\nWarm Dark Matter (WDM) on the 21cm signal power spectrum using an updated\nimplementation of the WDM effect in the public code \21cmFast and\nconsidering a single population of cosmic dawn galaxies. By focusing on\ninferring the WDM mass, we analyze the degeneracies between the latter and the\nastrophysics parameters characterizing star formation and X-ray heating and we\nemphasize the role of the threshold mass for star-forming galaxies, M _rm\nturn. We study the capability of the recently built HERA telescope to\nreconstruct the WDM mass by adopting the statistical approach of\nsimulation-based inference. We include a comparison of the per-parameter\nreconstruction quality for different number of simulations used in the training\nof the algorithm. Our results indicate that HERA could surpass current\nLyman-\α forest constraints if Cosmic Dawn galaxies exhibit a threshold\nmass M _{rm turn} lesssim 10⁸ , M_ odot. The X-ray source properties\nconsidered in this study may also influence the strength of the WDM constraint\nfor lower threshold masses.\n

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