The 21 cm signal and the interplay between dark matter annihilations and astrophysical processes

Understand

Future dedicated radio interferometers, including HERA and SKA, are very promising tools that aim to study the epoch of reionization and beyond via measurements of the 21 cm signal from neutral hydrogen.

• Dark matter (DM) annihilations into charged particles change the thermal history of the Universe and, as a consequence, affect the 21 cm signal.
• Accurately predicting the effect of DM strongly relies on the modeling of annihilations inside halos.
• In this work, we use up-to-date computations of the energy deposition rates by the products from DM annihilations, a proper treatment of the contribution from DM annihilations in halos, as well as values of the annihilation cross section allowed by the most recent cosmological measurements from the Planck satellite.