Constraints on long-lived electrically charged massive particles from anomalous strong lens systems

Abstract

We investigate anomalous strong lens systems, particularly weak lens effects of structures in the line of sight, in models with long-lived electrically charged massive particles (CHAMPs). In such models, matter density perturbations are suppressed through the acoustic damping and the flux ratios in lens systems are impacted, from which we can constrain the nature of CHAMPs. For this purpose, we perform N-body simulations and develop a fitting formula to obtain non-linear matter power spectra in models where cold neutral dark matter and CHAMPs coexist in the early Universe. By using the observed anomalous quadruple lens samples, we obtained the constraints on the lifetime (tau(Ch)) and the mass density fraction (r(Ch)) of CHAMPs. We show that, for r(Ch) - 1, the lifetime is bounded as tau(Ch) < 0.96 yr at the 95% confidence level, while a longer lifetime tau(Ch) = 10 yr is allowed when r(Ch) < 0.5 at the 95% confidence level. Implications of our result for particle physics models are also discussed. (c) 2017 IOP Publishing Ltd and Sissa Medialab