Constraints on the Dark Matter Particle Mass from the Number of Milky
  Way Satellites
  We have conducted N-body simulations of the growth of Milky Way-sized halos
in cold and warm dark matter cosmologies. The number of dark matter satellites
in our simulated Milky Ways decreases with decreasing mass of the dark matter
particle. Assuming that the number of dark matter satellites exceeds or equals
the number of observed satellites of the Milky Way we derive lower limits on
the dark matter particle mass. We find with 95% confidence m_s > 13.3 keV for a
sterile neutrino produced by the Dodelson and Widrow mechanism, m_s > 8.9 keV
for the Shi and Fuller mechanism, m_s > 3.0 keV for the Higgs decay mechanism,
and m_{WDM} > 2.3 keV for a thermal dark matter particle. The recent discovery
of many new dark matter dominated satellites of the Milky Way in the Sloan
Digital Sky Survey allows us to set lower limits comparable to constraints from
the complementary methods of Lyman-alpha forest modeling and X-ray observations
of the unresolved cosmic X-ray background and of dark matter halos from dwarf
galaxy to cluster scales. Future surveys like LSST, DES, PanSTARRS, and
SkyMapper have the potential to discover many more satellites and further
improve constraints on the dark matter particle mass.
