ETHOS — an effective theory of structure formation: From dark particle physics to the matter distribution of the Universe
Abstract
We formulate an effective theory of structure formation (ETHOS) that enables cosmological structure formation to be computed in almost any microphysical model of dark matter physics. This framework maps the detailed microphysical theories of particle dark matter interactions into the physical effective parameters that shape the linear matter power spectrum and the self-interaction transfer cross section of nonrelativistic dark matter. These are the input to structure formation simulations, which follow the evolution of the cosmological and galactic dark matter distributions. Models with similar effective parameters in ETHOS but with different dark particle physics would nevertheless result in similar dark matter distributions. We present a general method to map an ultraviolet complete or effective field theory of low-energy dark matter physics into parameters that affect the linear matter power spectrum and carry out this mapping for several representative particle models. We further propose a simple but useful choice for characterizing the dark matter self-interaction transfer cross section that parametrizes self-scattering in structure formation simulations. Taken together, these effective parameters in ETHOS allow the classification of dark matter theories according to their structure formation properties rather than their intrinsic particle properties, paving the way for future simulations to span the space of viable dark matter physics relevant for structure formation.
Additional Information
© 2016 American Physical Society. Received 2 February 2016; published 28 June 2016. We thank Manoj Kaplinghat for useful suggestions. F.-Y. C.-R. acknowledges the support of the National Aeronautical and Space Administration ATP Grant No. 14-ATP14-0018 at Harvard University. K. S. gratefully acknowledges support from the Friends of the Institute for Advanced Study. The research of K. S. is supported in part by a Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada Discovery Grant. The work of F.-Y. C.-R. was performed in part at the California Institute of Technology for the Keck Institute for Space Studies, which is funded by the W. M. Keck Foundation. M. V. acknowledges support through a Research Support Committee (Reed Fund) award at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Dark Cosmology Centre is funded by the Danish National Research Foundation. J. Z. is supported by the European Union under a Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship, Contract No. PIIF-GA-2013-62772. C. P. gratefully acknowledges the support of the Klaus Tschira Foundation.Attached Files
Published - PhysRevD.93.123527.pdf
Submitted - 1512.05344v3.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 68951
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20160711-094641072
- 14-ATP14-0018
- NASA
- Friends of the Institute for Advanced Study
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
- W. M. Keck Foundation
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
- Danish National Research Foundation
- PIIF-GA-2013-62772
- Marie Curie Fellowship
- Klaus Tschira Foundation
- Created
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2016-07-11Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-11Created from EPrint's last_modified field