Search for the light dark matter with an X-ray spectrometer

Sterile neutrinos with the mass in the keV range are interesting warm dark matter (WDM) candidates. The restrictions on their parameters (mass and mixing angle) obtained by current X-ray missions (XMM-Newton or Chandra) can only be improved by less than an order of magnitude in the near future. Therefore the new strategy of search is needed. We compare the sensitivities of existing and planned X-ray missions for the detection of WDM particles with the mass ∼1–20 keV. We show that existing technology allows an improvement in sensitivity by a factor of 100. Namely, two different designs can achieve such an improvement: (A) a spectrometer with the high spectral resolving power of 0.1%, wide (steradian) field of view, with small effective area of about cm2 (which can be achieved without focusing optics) or (B) the same type of spectrometer with a smaller (degree) field of view but with a much larger effective area of 103 cm2 (achieved with the help of focusing optics). To illustrate the use of the “type A” design we present the bounds on parameters of the sterile neutrino obtained from analysis of the data taken by an X-ray microcalorimeter. In spite of the very short exposure time (100 s) the derived bound is comparable to the one found from long XMM-Newton observation.