21 cm forest probes on axion dark matter in postinflationary Peccei-Quinn symmetry breaking scenarios

Abstract

We study the future prospects of the 21cm forest observations on the axion-like dark matter when the spontaneous breaking of the global Peccei-Quinn (PQ) symmetry occurs after the inflation. The large isocurvature perturbations of order unity sourced from axion-like particles can result in the enhancement of minihalo formation, and the subsequent hierarchical structure formation can affect the minihalo abundance whose masses can exceed ${\cal O}(10^4) M_{\odot}$ relevant for the 21cm forest observations. We show that the 21cm forest observations are capable of probing the axion-like particle mass in the range $10^{-18}\lesssim m_a \lesssim 10^{-12}$ eV for the temperature independent axion mass. For the temperature dependent axion mass, the zero temperature axion mass scale for which the 21cm forest measurements can be affected is extended further to as big as of order $10^{-6}$ eV.