Constraining dark matter through 21-cm observations

Beyond reionization epoch cosmic hydrogen is neutral and can be directly observed through its 21-cm line signal. If dark matter (DM) decays or annihilates, the corresponding energy input affects the hydrogen kinetic temperature and ionized fraction, and contributes to the Ly alpha background. The changes induced by these processes on the 21-cm signal can then be used to constrain the proposed DM candidates, among which we select the three most popular ones: (i) 25-keV decaying sterile neutrinos, (ii) 10-MeV decaying light dark matter (LDM) and (iii) 10-MeV annihilating LDM. Although we find that the DM effects are considerably smaller than found by previous studies (due to a more physical description of the energy transfer from DM to the gas), we conclude that combined observations of the 21-cm background and of its gradient should be able to put constrains at least on LDM candidates. In fact, LDM decays (annihilations) induce differential brightness temperature variations with respect to the non-decaying/annihilating DM case up to Delta delta T-b = 8 (22) mK at about 50 (15) MHz. In principle, this signal could be detected both by current single-dish radio telescopes and future facilities as Low Frequency Array; however, this assumes that ionospheric, interference and foreground issues can be properly taken care of.