ABSTRACT
The recent detection of the 21-cm absorption signal by the EDGES collaboration has been widely used to constrain the basic properties of dark matter particles. However, extracting the parameters of the 21-cm absorption signal relies on a chosen parametrization of the foreground radio emission. Recently, the new parametrizations of the foreground and systematics have been proposed, showing significant deviations of the 21-cm signal parameters from those assumed by the original EDGES paper. In this paper, we consider this new uncertainty, comparing the observed signal with the predictions of several dark matter models, including the widely used cold dark matter model, 1–3 keV warm dark matter models, and 7 keV sterile neutrino (SN7) model, capable of producing the reported 3.5 keV line. We show that all these dark matter models cannot be statistically distinguished using the available EDGES data.
A naturally light sterile neutrino in an asymmetric dark matter model