Tightening Bounds on Warm Dark Matter with High-Redshift Gamma-Ray Bursts

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ID: 328485
2026
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Abstract
Abstract The cold dark matter paradigm successfully explains large-scale structure but faces persistent tensions on small scales. Warm dark matter (WDM) with keV-scale particles can alleviate these issues by suppressing small-scale structure formation. The presence of collapsed structures at high redshifts places strong lower limits on the WDM particle mass mx. Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are ideal high-redshift probes due to their extreme brightness. Using the most recent Swift GRB data accumulated over the past two decades, we derive robust constraints on mx by conservatively assuming that the comoving GRB formation rate is proportional to the cosmic star formation rate (SFR), with an additional redshift evolution parameterized as (1 + z)α. Applying a maximum-likelihood analysis to 118 GRBs with redshift z < 10 and luminosity L ≥ 4.0 × 1052 erg s−1, we obtain mx ≳ 1.23 keV and $\alpha =1.57^{+1.14}_{-0.57}$ at the 95 % confidence level (CL). The no-evolution scenario (α = 0), in which the GRB rate exactly traces the SFR without additional redshift evolution, is excluded at the 5σ level. Adopting the best-fit value α = 1.57 as a prior tightens the lower limit on mx to mx ≳ 1.59 keV at the 95 % CL. These robust constraints demonstrate that GRBs are a powerful probe of the early Universe. A better understanding of the relationship between the GRB rate and the SFR would enable even tighter limits on WDM models.
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Authors Jun-Jie Wei, J. M. Hao, Ding-Fang Hu, Yang Liu, Bao Wang, Xi Kang, Xue-Feng Wu
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Journal monthly notices of the royal astronomical society
Year 2026
DOI
10.1093/mnras/stag1720
URL
https://academic.oup.com/mnras/advance-article-pdf/doi/10.1093/mnras/stag1720/71034168/stag1720.pdf
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