Self-interacting dark matter in cosmology: Accurate numerical implementation and observational constraints

Abstract

This paper presents a systematic and accurate treatment of the evolution of cosmological perturbations in self-interacting dark matter models, for particles which decoupled from the primordial plasma while relativistic. We provide a numerical implementation of the Boltzmann hierarchies developed in a previous paper [JCAP, 09 (2020) 041] in a publicly available Boltzmann code and show how it can be applied to realistic DM candidates such as sterile neutrinos either under resonant or non-resonant production mechanisms, and for different field mediators. At difference with traditional fluid approximations - also known as a c eff-c vis parametrizations - our approach follows the evolution of phase-space perturbations under elastic DM interactions for a wide range of interaction models, including the effects of late kinetic decoupling. Finally, we analyze the imprints left by different self interacting models on linear structure formation, which can be constrained using Lyman-α forest and satellite counts. We find new lower bounds on the particle mass that are less restrictive than previous constraints.