A forward-modelling method to infer the dark matter particle mass from strong gravitational lenses

Author:

He Qiuhan1ORCID,Robertson Andrew1ORCID,Nightingale James1ORCID,Cole Shaun1,Frenk Carlos S1,Massey Richard1ORCID,Amvrosiadis Aristeidis1,Li Ran23,Cao Xiaoyue23,Etherington Amy1

Affiliation:

1. Institute for Computational Cosmology, Department of Physics, Durham University , South Road, Durham DH1 3LE, UK

2. National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences , 20A Datun Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100012, China

3. School of Astronomy and Space Science, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences , Beijing 100049, China

Abstract

ABSTRACT A fundamental prediction of the cold dark matter (CDM) model of structure formation is the existence of a vast population of dark matter haloes extending to subsolar masses. By contrast, other dark matter models, such as a warm thermal relic (WDM), predict a cutoff in the mass function at a mass which, for popular models, lies approximately between 107 and $10^{10}\, {\rm M}_\odot$. We use mock observations to demonstrate the viability of a forward modelling approach to extract information about low-mass dark haloes lying along the line of sight to galaxy–galaxy strong lenses. This can be used to constrain the mass of a thermal relic dark matter particle, mDM. With 50 strong lenses at Hubble Space Telescope resolution and a maximum pixel signal-to-noise ratio of ∼50, the expected median 2σ constraint for a CDM-like model (with a halo mass cutoff at $10^{7}\, {\rm M}_\odot$) is $m_\mathrm{DM} \gt 4.10 \, \mathrm{keV}$ (50 per cent chance of constraining mDM to be better than 4.10 keV). If, however, the dark matter is a warm particle of $m_\mathrm{DM}=2.2 \, \mathrm{keV}$, our ‘approximate Bayesian computation’ method would result in a median estimate of mDM between 1.43 and 3.21 keV. Our method can be extended to the large samples of strong lenses that will be observed by future telescopes and could potentially rule out the standard CDM model of cosmogony. To aid future survey design, we quantify how these constraints will depend on data quality (spatial resolution and integration time) as well as on the lensing geometry (source and lens redshifts).

Funder

SMC

European Research Council

Science and Technology Facilities Council

European Union

Horizon 2020

National Natural Science Foundation of China

China Manned Space

Durham University

STFC

BIS

Publisher

Oxford University Press (OUP)

Subject

Space and Planetary Science,Astronomy and Astrophysics

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