Abstract
Recent work has suggested that an additional $6.9 \, eV$ per
baryon of heating in the intergalactic medium is needed to reconcile
hydrodynamical simulations with Lyman-$\alpha$ forest absorption line widths at
redshift $z0.1$. Resonant conversion of dark photon dark matter into low
frequency photons is a viable source of such heating. We perform the first
hydrodynamical simulations including dark photon heating and show that dark
photons with mass $m_A'810^-14\rm\,eV\,c^-2$ and kinetic
mixing $510^-15$ can alleviate the heating excess. A
prediction of this model is a non-standard thermal history for underdense gas
at $z 3$.
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