Cosmic Microwave Background constraints of decaying dark matter particle
  properties
  If a component of cosmological dark matter is made up of massive particles -
such as sterile neutrinos - that decay with cosmological lifetime to emit
photons, the reionization history of the universe would be affected, and cosmic
microwave background anisotropies can be used to constrain such a decaying
particle model of dark matter. The optical depth depends rather sensitively on
the decaying dark matter particle mass m_{dm}, lifetime tau_{dm}, and the mass
fraction of cold dark matter f that they account for in this model. Assuming
that there are no other sources of reionization and using the WMAP 7-year data,
we find that 250 eV < m_{dm} < 1 MeV, whereas 2.23*10^3 yr < tau_{dm} <
1.23*10^18 yr. The best fit values for m_{dm} and tau_{dm}/f are 17.3 keV and
2.03*10^16 yr respectively.
