2008

The Energy Cascade from Warm Dark Matter Decays

Valdés, M., Ferrara, A.

Understand

We use a set of Monte Carlo simulations to follow the cascade produced by a primary electron of energy E_in in the intergalactic medium.

We choose E_in=3-10 keV as expected from the decay of one of the most popular Warm Dark Matter (WDM) candidates, sterile neutrinos.
Our simulation takes into account processes previously neglected such as free-free interactions with ions and recombinations and uses the best available cross sections for collisional ionizations and excitations with H and He and for electron-electron collisions.
We precisely derive the fraction of the primary electron energy that heats the gas, ionizes atoms and produces line and continuum photons as a function of the ionization fraction.

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