Strong constraints on decay and annihilation of dark matter from heating of gas-rich dwarf galaxies

Gas-rich dwarf galaxies located outside the virial radius of their host are relatively pristine systems and have ultralow gas cooling rates. This makes them very sensitive to heat injection by annihilation or decay of dark matter (DM). Such dwarfs are particularly sensitive to DM producing e^± with energies 1-100 MeV or photons with energies 13.6 eV-1 keV, because these products can be efficiently thermalized in the neutral hydrogen gas of the dwarfs. Following the methodology of Wadekar and Farrar [Phys. Rev. D 103, 123028 (2021), 10.1103/PhysRevD.103.123028], we require the rate of heat injection by DM to not exceed the ultralow radiative cooling rate of gas in the Leo T dwarf galaxy. This gives model-independent bounds on (i) the decay lifetime of DM to e^± (photons), which are stronger than all the previous literature for m_DM∼1 - 10 MeV (m_DM∼0.02 - 1 keV ), (ii) annihilation of DM to e^± comparable to constraints from cosmic microwave background and x /γ -ray surveys. We also translate our bounds for the case of the following DM models: axionlike particles (ALPs), sterile neutrinos, excited DM states, Higgs portal scalars, and dark baryons. Observations of gas-rich low-mass dwarfs from upcoming 21 cm and optical surveys can therefore be powerful probes of a multitude of models of DM.