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DOE OSTI · 3684065

Massive neutrinos and interacting dark matter look alike through the lens of lensing

Abstract

Here, we demonstrate that the suppression in the lensing power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) caused by massive neutrinos can be mimicked by dark matter-baryon interactions at the precision of next-generation CMB experiments. Thus, a determination of neutrino masses from the CMB lensing power spectrum may be compromised. We illustrate the degeneracy for a dark matter-proton cross section ∝ $v$ –4 , which arises in the t-channel exchange of an ultralight mediator in the nonrelativistic limit.

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BibTeXRIS

Anchordoqui, Luis A. [City Univ. of New York (CUNY), NY (United States); American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY (United States)] (ORCID:0000000314637136), Marfatia, Danny [Univ. of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI (United States)], Soriano, Jorge F. [City Univ. of New York (CUNY), NY (United States)] (ORCID:0000000262537378). 2026-05-11. Massive neutrinos and interacting dark matter look alike through the lens of lensing. https://doi.org/10.1103/r89c-jtp2

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