This was originally a post in a thread at the Physics Forums.
The fact of the matter is that there is no theory of dark matter consistent with all the data.
Every outstanding dark matter theory is contradicted by some very solid piece of empirical data. The following 36 citations set forth some of the highlights of the current crisis in dark matter theory.
There are lots of dark matter publications, but those publications are overwhelmingly ruling out variations of dark matter theory, sometimes huge classes of them such as pretty much all MACHOs, all WIMPS, all collisionless dark matter, all cold dark matter theories, and all self-interacting dark matter theories. Warm dark matter is very close to being over constrained (and general exclusions of collisionless dark matter are the nail in the coffin), and many forms of axion dark matter are ruled out.
One common theme is that it isn't possible to devise a dark matter model that simultaneously fits lamdaCDM model constraints and the tight fix of inferred dark matter distributions to baryonic matter distributions (something that modified gravity models do naturally).
* Exclusions from the LHC. https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.02304 and https://arxiv.org/abs/1510.01516
* Dark matter can't have any significant coupling to Standard Model matter. https://arxiv.org/abs/1501.00907 This is a problem because "collisionless" dark matter that does not interact with Standard Model matter is pretty much ruled out per other citations below.
* Exclusions from Xenon-100 https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.02222
* Exclusions of Charming Dark Matter theories. https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.01930
* Theodorus Maria Nieuwenhuizen "Subjecting dark matter candidates to the cluster test" (October 3, 2017):
Galaxy clusters, employed by Zwicky to demonstrate the existence of dark matter, pose new stringent tests. If merging clusters demonstrate that dark matter is self-interacting with cross section σ/m∼2 cm2/gr, MACHOs, primordial black holes and light axions that build MACHOs are ruled out as cluster dark matter. Recent strong lensing and X-ray gas data of the quite relaxed and quite spherical cluster A1835 allow to test the cases of dark matter with Maxwell-Boltzmann, Bose-Einstein and Fermi-Dirac distribution, next to Navarro-Frenck-White profiles. Fits to all these profiles are formally rejected at over 5σ, except in the fermionic situation. The interpretation in terms of (nearly) Dirac neutrinos with mass of 1.61+0.19−0.30 eV/c2 is consistent with results on the cluster A1689, with the WMAP, Planck and DES dark matter fractions and with the nondetection of neutrinoless double β-decay. The case will be tested in the 2018 KATRIN experiment.
A variety of searches for sterile neutrinos have also ruled out this possibility in the relevant mass range. See, e.g., https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.06488 and http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/718/3/032008/pdf
* Exclusions for Axion Dark Matter: Renée Hlozek, David J. E. Marsh, Daniel Grin "Using the Full Power of the Cosmic Microwave Background to Probe Axion Dark Matter" (August 18, 2017).
* Combined direct dark matter detection exclusions. https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.04630 and https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.01632
* Exclusions based on non-detection of annihilations in dwarf galaxies. https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.04858
* Primordial black hole exclusions. https://arxiv.org/abs/1301.4984
* Daniele Gaggero, et al., "Searching for Primordial Black Holes in the radio and X-ray sky" (Pre-Print December 1, 2016). Abstract:
We model the accretion of gas on to a population of massive primordial black holes in the Milky Way, and compare the predicted radio and X-ray emission with observational data. We show that under conservative assumptions on the accretion process, the possibility that O(10)M⊙ primordial black holes can account for all of the dark matter in the Milky Way is excluded at 4σ by a comparison with the VLA radio catalog at 1.4 GHz, and at more than 5σ by a comparison with the NuSTAR X-ray catalog (10 - 40 keV). We also propose a new strategy to identify such a population of primordial black holes with more sensitive future radio and X-ray surveys.
* Tight Warm Dark Matter parameter exclusions. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1704.01832.pdf
* More Warm Dark Matter parameters exclusions: Simon Birrer, Adam Amara, and Alexandre Refregier, "Lensing substructure quantification in RXJ1131-1231: A 2 keV lower bound on dark matter thermal relict mass" (January 31, 2017).
We study the substructure content of the strong gravitational lens RXJ1131-1231 through a forward modelling approach that relies on generating an extensive suite of realistic simulations. The statistics of the substructure population of halos depends on the properties of dark matter. We use a merger tree prescription that allows us to stochastically generate substructure populations whose properties depend on the dark matter particle mass. These synthetic halos are then used as lenses to produce realistic mock images that have the same features, e.g. luminous arcs, quasar positions, instrumental noise and PSF, as the data. By analysing the data and the simulations in the same way, we are able to constrain models of dark matter statistically using Approximate Bayesian Computing (ABC) techniques. This method relies on constructing summary statistics and distance measures that are sensitive to the signal being targeted. We find that using the HST data for \RXJ we are able to rule out a warm dark matter thermal relict mass below 2 keV at the 2 sigma confidence level.
* Lin Wang, Da-Ming Chen, Ran Li "The total density profile of DM halos fitted from strong lensing" (July 31, 2017). Abstract:
In cosmological N-body simulations, the baryon effects on the cold dark matter (CDM) halos can be used to solve the small scale problems in ΛCDM cosmology, such as cusp-core problem and missing satellites problem. It turns out that the resultant total density profiles (baryons plus CDM), for halos with mass ranges from dwarf galaxies to galaxy clusters, can match the observations of the rotation curves better than NFW profile. In our previous work, however, we found that such density profiles fail to match the most recent strong gravitational lensing observations. In this paper, we do the converse: we fit the most recent strong lensing observations with the predicted lensing probabilities based on the so-called (α,β,γ) double power-law profile, and use the best-fit parameters (α=3.04,β=1.39,γ=1.88) to calculate the rotation curves. We find that, at outer parts for a typical galaxy, the rotation curve calculated with our fitted density profile is much lower than observations and those based on simulations, including the NFW profile. This again verifies and strengthen the conclusions in our previous works: in ΛCDM paradigm, it is difficult to reconcile the contradictions between the observations for rotation curves and strong gravitational lensing.
As the body text explains:
It is now well established that, whatever the manners the baryon effects are included in the collisionless CDM N-body cosmological simulations, if the resultant density pro- files can match the observations of rotation curves, they cannot simultaneously predict the observations of strong gravitational lensing (under- or over-predict). And for the case of typical galaxies, the reverse is also true, namely, the SIS profile preferred by strong lensing cannot be supported by the observations of rotation curves near the centers of galaxies.
* Paolo Salucci and Nicola Turini, "Evidences for Collisional Dark Matter In Galaxies?" (July 4, 2017). Abstract:
The more we go deep into the knowledge of the dark component which embeds the stellar component of galaxies, the more we realize the profound interconnection between them. We show that the scaling laws among the structural properties of the dark and luminous matter in galaxies are too complex to derive from two inert components that just share the same gravitational field. In this paper we review the 30 years old paradigm of collisionless dark matter in galaxies. We found that their dynamical properties show strong indications that the dark and luminous components have interacted in a more direct way over a Hubble Time. The proofs for this are the presence of central cored regions with constant DM density in which their size is related with the disk length scales. Moreover we find that the quantity ρDM(r,L,RD)ρ⋆(r,L,RD) shows, in all objects, peculiarities very hardly explained in a collisionless DM scenario.
* Dark matter distributions have to closely track baryon distributions, even though there is no viable mechanism to do so: Edo van Uitert, et al., "Halo ellipticity of GAMA galaxy groups from KiDS weak lensing" (October 13, 2016).
* One of the more successful recent efforts to reproduce the baryonic Tully-Fischer relation with CDM models is L.V. Sales, et al., "The low-mass end of the baryonic Tully-Fisher relation" (February 5, 2016). It explains:
[T]he literature is littered with failed attempts to reproduce the Tully-Fisher relation in a cold dark matter-dominated universe. Direct galaxy formation simulations, for example, have for many years consistently produced galaxies so massive and compact that their rotation curves were steeply declining and, generally, a poor match to observation. Even semi-analytic models, where galaxy masses and sizes can be adjusted to match observation, have had difficulty reproducing the Tully-Fisher relation, typically predicting velocities at given mass that are significantly higher than observed unless somewhat arbitrary adjustments are made to the response of the dark halo.
The paper manages to simulate the Tully-Fisher relation only with a model that has sixteen parameters carefully "calibrated to match the observed galaxy stellar mass function and the sizes of galaxies at z = 0" and "chosen to resemble the surroundings of the Local Group of Galaxies", however, and still struggles to reproduce the one parameter fits of the MOND toy-model from three decades ago. Any data set can be described by almost any model so long as it has enough adjustable parameters.
* Dark matter can't explain bulge formation in galaxies: Alyson M. Brooks, Charlotte R. Christensen, "Bulge Formation via Mergers in Cosmological Simulations" (12 Nov 2015).
[W]e also demonstrate that it is very difficult for current stellar feedback models to reproduce the small bulges observed in more massive disk galaxies like the Milky Way. We argue that feedback models need to be improved, or an additional source of feedback such as AGN is necessary to generate the required outflows.
* Baryon effects can't save cold dark matter models. https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03324
* Cold dark matter models don't explain the astronomy data. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1305.7452v2.pdf
Evidence that Cold Dark Matter (ΛCDM), CDM+ baryons and its proposed tailored cures do not work in galaxies is staggering, and the CDM wimps (DM particles heavier than 1 GeV) are strongly disfavoured combining theory with galaxy astronomical observations.
* As of 2014, a review article ruled out rule out pretty much all cold dark matter models except "warm dark matter" (WDM) (at a keV scale mass that is at the bottom of the range permitted by the lamdaCDM model) and "self-interacting dark matter" (SIDM) (which escapes problems that otherwise plague cold dark matter models with a fifth force that only acts between dark matter particles requiring at least a beyond the Standard Model fermion and a beyond the Standard Model force carried by a new massive boson with a mass on the order of 1-100 MeV). Alyson Brooks, "Re-Examining Astrophysical Constraints on the Dark Matter Model" (July 28, 2014). As other more recent links cited here note, collisionless WDM and pretty much all SIDM models have since been ruled out.
* Dark matter annihilation has largely been ruled out as a source of FERMI signals attributed to dark matter annihilation. Samuel K. Lee, Mariangela Lisanti, Benjamin R. Safdi, Tracy R. Slatyer, and Wei Xue. "Evidence for unresolved gamma-ray point sources in the Inner Galaxy." Phys. Rev. Lett. (February 3, 2016). Millisecond pulsars were the source.
* Proposed warm dark matter annihilation signals also turned out to be false alarms. https://arxiv.org/abs/1408.1699 and https://arxiv.org/abs/1408.4115
* The bounds on the minimum dark matter mean lifetime of 3.57*10^24 seconds. This is roughly 10^17 years. By comparison the age of the universe is roughly 1.38 * 10^9 years. This means that dark matter (if it exists) is at least as stable as anything other than a proton, which has an experimentally determined mean lifetime of at least 10^33 years. https://arxiv.org/abs/1504.01195 This means that all dark matter candidates that are not perfectly stable or at least metastable are ruled out. Decaying dark matter and dark matter with any significant annihilation cross section are inconsistent with observation.
* Torsten Bringmann, et al., "Strong constraints on self-interacting dark matter with light mediators" (December 2, 2016). Abstract:
Coupling dark matter to light new particles is an attractive way to combine thermal production with strong velocity-dependent self-interactions. Here we point out that in such models the dark matter annihilation rate is generically enhanced by the Sommerfeld effect, and we derive the resulting constraints from the Cosmic Microwave Background and other indirect detection probes. For the frequently studied case of s-wave annihilation these constraints exclude the entire parameter space where the self-interactions are large enough to address the small-scale problems of structure formation.
The conclusion of the paper notes that:
Models of DM with velocity-dependent self-interactions have recently received a great deal of attention for their potential to produce a number of interesting effects on astrophysical scales. We have shown in this Letter that these models face very strong constraints from the CMB and DM indirect detection. In the most natural realization of this scenario with a light vector mediator with kinetic mixing, these constraints rule out the entire parameter space where the self-scattering cross section can be relevant for astrophysical systems. These bounds remain highly relevant for a number of generalizations of the scenario, such as a different dark sector temperature and different mediator branching ratios. Clearly, future efforts to develop particle physics models for SIDM need to address these issues in order to arrive at models that provide a picture consistent with all observations in cosmology, astrophysics and particle physics.
* Dark photon parameter space (the carrier boson of the SIDM models) is also tightly constrained and all but ruled out. Yet, the properties a dark photon has to have, if there is one, are tightly experimentally established based upon cluster dynamics. https://arxiv.org/abs/1504.06576
* The Bullet Cluster is a huge problem for DM. Jounghun Lee, Eiichiro Komatsu, "Bullet Cluster: A Challenge to LCDM Cosmology" (May 22, 2010). Later published in Astrophysical Journal 718 (2010) 60-65. Abstract:
To quantify how rare the bullet-cluster-like high-velocity merging systems are in the standard LCDM cosmology, we use a large-volume 27 (Gpc/h)^3 MICE simulation to calculate the distribution of infall velocities of subclusters around massive main clusters. The infall-velocity distribution is given at (1-3)R_{200} of the main cluster (where R_{200} is similar to the virial radius), and thus it gives the distribution of realistic initial velocities of subclusters just before collision. These velocities can be compared with the initial velocities used by the non-cosmological hydrodynamical simulations of 1E0657-56 in the literature. The latest parameter search carried out recently by Mastropietro and Burkert showed that the initial velocity of 3000 km/s at about 2R_{200} is required to explain the observed shock velocity, X-ray brightness ratio of the main and subcluster, and displacement of the X-ray peaks from the mass peaks. We show that such a high infall velocity at 2R_{200} is incompatible with the prediction of a LCDM model: the probability of finding 3000 km/s in (2-3)R_{200} is between 3.3X10^{-11} and 3.6X10^{-9}. It is concluded that the existence of 1E0657-56 is incompatible with the prediction of a LCDM model, unless a lower infall velocity solution for 1E0657-56 with < 1800 km/s at 2R_{200} is found.
and also
Garry W. Angus and Stacy S. McGaugh, "The collision velocity of the bullet cluster in conventional and modified dynamics" (September 2, 2007) published at MNRAS.
We consider the orbit of the bullet cluster 1E 0657-56 in both CDM and MOND using accurate mass models appropriate to each case in order to ascertain the maximum plausible collision velocity. Impact velocities consistent with the shock velocity (~ 4700km/s) occur naturally in MOND. CDM can generate collision velocities of at most ~ 3800km/s, and is only consistent with the data provided that the shock velocity has been substantially enhanced by hydrodynamical effects.
* El Gordo poses similar problems for dark matter models. Sandor M. Molnar, Tom Broadhurst. "A HYDRODYNAMICAL SOLUTION FOR THE “TWIN-TAILED” COLLIDING GALAXY CLUSTER “EL GORDO”. The Astrophysical Journal, 2015; 800 (1): 37 DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/800/1/37
* Axion fuzzy dark matter ruled out: Vid Iršič, Matteo Viel, Martin G. Haehnelt, James S. Bolton, George D. Becker. "First Constraints on Fuzzy Dark Matter from Lyman-α Forest Data and Hydrodynamical Simulations." Physical Review Letters, 2017; 119 (3) DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.031302
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