The effect of dark matter discreteness on light propagation

DOI10.1088/1475-7516/2022/04/030MaRDI QIDQ5099256zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Sofie Marie Koksbang, Syksy Räsänen

Publication date 31 August 2022

Published in Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/2108.06163

zbMATH Keywords

dark matter experimentsdark matter theorygravity

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Flows related to mean curvature (53E10) Geometric optics (78A05) Waves and radiation in optics and electromagnetic theory (78A40) Quantum optics (81V80) Observational and experimental questions in relativity and gravitational theory (83B05) Dark matter and dark energy (83C56)

Abstract: Light propagation in cosmology is usually studied in the geometrical optics approximation which requires the spacetime curvature to be much smaller than the light wavenumber. However, for non-fuzzy particle dark matter the curvature is concentrated in widely separated spikes at particle location. If the particle mass is localised within a Compton wavelength, then for masses $gtrsim10^4$ GeV the curvature is larger than the energy of CMB photons. We consider a post-geometrical optics approximation that includes curvature. Photons gain a gravity-induced mass when travelling through dark matter, and light paths are not null nor geodesic. We find that the correction to the redshift is negligible. For the angular diameter distance, we show how the small average density emerges from the large local spikes when integrating along the light ray. We find that there can be a large correction to the angular diameter distance even for photon energies much larger than the curvature. This may allow to set a strong upper limit on the mass of dark matter particles. We discuss open issues related to the validity of our approximations.

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Cited in

(4)

• VELOCITY OF LIGHT IN DARK MATTER WITH CHARGE
• The effect of matter discreteness on gravitational wave propagation in post-geometrical optics
• Gaussian beams and caustic avoidance in gravitational optics
• Gravitational-wave dispersion over inhomogeneous space-times: general relativity, screened theories of gravity and non-minimal dark energy

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