Physics (Internal)

Constraining Dark Matter Interactions with Lyman-alpha Data

This event is part of the HET Seminar Series.

Despite its remarkable success, the standard LCDM paradigm has been challenged lately by potential tensions in the Hubble Constant measurements, as well as a slight mismatch between simulations and observations on smaller scales. This has reinvigorated interest in beyond-LCDM models, such as Dark Matter interacting either with standard model particles or with an additional dark sector. These interactions result in a suppression of the matter power spectrum on small scales, making them an ideal target to be constrained with Lyman-alpha data. In this talk I will present a novel parameterisation of this small-scale power suppression, which allows these models to be constrained with Lyman-alpha data without needing new computationally expensive hydrodynamical simulations for each set of model parameters.