Novel constraints on the particle nature of dark matter from stellar streams

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Tidal streams are highly sensitive to perturbations from passing dark matter (DM) subhalos and thus provide a means of measuring their abundance. In a recent paper, we analyzed the distribution of stars along the GD-1 stream with a combination of data from the Gaia satellite and the Pan-STARRS survey, and we demonstrated that the population of DM subhalos predicted by the cold dark matter (CDM) paradigm are necessary and sufficient to explain the perturbations observed in the linear density of stars. In this paper, we use the measurements of the subhalo mass function (SHMF) from the GD-1 data combined with a similar analysis of the Pal 5 stream to provide novel constraints on alternative DM scenarios that predict a suppression of the SHMF on scales smaller than the mass of dwarf galaxies, marginalizing over uncertainties in the slope and normalization of the unsuppressed SHMF and the susceptibility of DM subhalos in the inner Milky Way to tidal disruption. In particular, we derive a 95% lower limit on the mass of warm dark matter (WDM) thermal relics m WDM > 3.6 keV from streams alone that strengthens to m WDM > 6.2 keV when adding dwarf satellite counts. Similarly, we constrain the axion mass in ultra-light (“fuzzy”) dark matter (FDM) models to be m FDM > 1.4 × 10-21 eV from streams alone or m FDM > 2.2 × 10-21 eV when adding dwarf satellite counts. Because we make use of simple approximate forms of the streams' SHMF measurement, our analysis is easy to replicate with other alternative DM models that lead to a suppression of the SHMF.