Strong Bound on Canonical Ultralight Axion Dark Matter from the Lyman-Alpha Forest
Keir K. Rogers, Hiranya V. Peiris
Abstract
We present a new bound on the ultralight axion (ULA) dark matter mass ${m}_{\mathrm{a}}$, using the Lyman-alpha forest to look for suppressed cosmic structure growth: a 95% lower limit ${m}_{\mathrm{a}}>2\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}20}\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{eV}$. This strongly disfavors ($>99.7%$ credibility) the canonical ULA with ${10}^{\ensuremath{-}22}\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{eV}<{m}_{\mathrm{a}}<{10}^{\ensuremath{-}21}\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{eV}$, motivated by the string axiverse and solutions to possible tensions in the cold dark matter model. We strengthen previous equivalent bounds by about an order of magnitude. We demonstrate the robustness of our results using an optimized emulator of improved hydrodynamical simulations.