Late-time decaying dark matter: constraints and implications for the H0-tension

Abstract

ABSTRACT We constrain and update the bounds on the lifetime of a decaying dark matter model with a warm massive daughter particle using the most recent low-redshift probes. We use Supernovae Type-Ia, Baryon Acoustic Oscillations and the time delay measurements of gravitationally lensed quasars. These data sets are complemented by the early universe priors taken from the Cosmic Microwave background. For the maximum allowed fraction of the relativistic daughter particle, the updated bounds on the lifetime are found to be $\tau \gt 9\, \rm {Gyr}$ and $\tau \gt 11\, \rm {Gyr}$ at $95{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$ C.L., for the two-body and many-body decay scenarios, respectively. We also comment on the recent proposal that the current two-body decaying dark matter model can provide resolution for the H0-tension, by contrasting against the standard ΛCDM model. We infer that the current dark matter decaying scenario is unlikely to alleviate the H0-tension. We find that the decaying dark matter is able to reduce the trend of the decreasing H0 values with increasing lens redshifts observed in the strong lensing data set.