Warm dark matter

Warm dark matter (WDM) is a hypothesized form of dark matter that has properties intermediate between those of hot dark matter and cold dark matter, causing structure formation to occur bottom-up from above their free-streaming scale, and top-down below their free streaming scale. The most common WDM candidates are sterile neutrinos and gravitinos. The WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles), when produced non-thermally could be candidates for warm dark matter. In general, however the thermally produced WIMPs are cold dark matter candidates.

References

• Dark Matter: Not Simply a Questions of MACHOS and WIMPS
• More than meets the eye
• Constraining warm dark matter candidates including sterile neutrinos and light gravitinos with WMAP and the Lyman-α forest
• The first star formation in WDM Universe
• W.B. Lin, D.H. Huang, X. Zhang, R. Brandenberger, Non-Thermal Production of WIMPs and the Sub-Galactic Structure of the Universe Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 954, 2001.

See also

• Dark matter
  • Hot dark matter (HDM)
  • Cold dark matter (CDM)
• Lambda-CDM model
• Modified Newtonian Dynamics

Further reading

• Bertone, Gianfranco (2010). Particle Dark Matter: Observations, Models and Searches. Cambridge University Press. pp. 762. ISBN 9780521763684.