The First Billion Years of a Warm Dark Matter Universe

Understand

We present results of cosmological N-body hydrodynamic chemistry simulations of primordial structure growth and evolution in a scenario with warm dark matter (WDM) having a mass of 3 keV (thermal relic) and compare with a model consisting of standard cold dark matter (CDM).

• We focus on the high-redshift universe ($z>6$), where the structure formation process should better reflect the primordial (linear) differences in terms of matter power spectrum.
• We find that early epochs can be exceptional probes of the dark-matter nature.
• Non-linear WDM power spectra and mass functions are up to 2 dex lower than in CDM and show spreads of factor of a few persisting in the whole first Gyr.