Comprehensive Study of Neutrino-Dark Matter Mixed Damping

Understand

Mixed damping is a physical effect that occurs when a heavy species is coupled to a relativistic fluid which is itself free streaming.

• As a cross-case between collisional damping and free-streaming, it is crucial in the context of neutrino-dark matter interactions.
• In this work, we establish the parameter space relevant for mixed damping, and we derive an analytical approximation for the evolution of dark matter perturbations in the mixed damping regime to illustrate the physical processes responsible for the suppression of cosmological perturbations.
• Although extended Boltzmann codes implementing neutrino-dark matter scattering terms automatically include mixed damping, this effect has not been systematically studied.