A gap in astronomical knowledge is Cosmic Dawn, a time when the first stars in the Universe formed, ending the cosmological dark ages. If there was dark matter at this early time, its decay might have heated up the intergalactic medium, sending out a signal that could be detectable today. A new paper suggests that the newly built Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA) telescope could measure this dark matter decay with 1,000 hours of observation or constrain its presence by three orders of magnitude.
The study focuses on the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array , which is a radio telescope in South Africa particularly suited for observing hydrogen in the early Universe. When it comes online, HERA will map the large-scale structure of hydrogen during the cosmic dark ages and cosmic dawn period, which is the time between the fading of the primeval fireball of the Big Bang and the appearance of the first stars and galaxies.
, creating a burst of energetic positrons and electrons, or protons and anti-protons. If that’s the case, then these energetic decay particles would interact with the 21-centimeter light.Based on observations of the cosmic microwave background and other studies, we know that WIMPs would have a very long decay half-life. We’ve seen no evidence of dark matter decay so far, which means either WIMPs don’t exist or their half-life is much more than a trillion years.
Even if HERA doesn’t detect any evidence of dark matter decay, it would still be a large step forward. Its constraints on dark matter half-life would be strong enough to rule out some WIMP models and winnow the range of models.
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