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

作者：Luis A. Anchordoqui, Danny Marfatia, Jorge F. Soriano · 发表于：Physical review. D/Physical review. D. · 年份：2026 · DOI：10.1103/r89c-jtp2 · 被引用次数：1 · 研究领域：Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena、Cosmology and Gravitation Theories、Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena

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 $\propto v^{-4}$, which arises in the $t$-channel exchange of an ultralight mediator in the nonrelativistic limit.