We investigate a new bound on the low reheating temperature in a scenario where the Universe experiences early matter domination before reheating after which the standard big bang cosmology begins. In many models of dark matter (DM), the small scale fluctuations of DM grow during the early matter-domination era and seed the formation of the ultracompact minihalos (UCMHs). Using the constraints on the number of UCMHs from gamma-ray observations, we find a lower bound on the reheating temperature between $\mathcal{O}(10)–\mathcal{O}(100)\mathrm{MeV}$ for WIMP dark matter depending on the nature of DM. A similar bound could be obtained for non-WIMP dark matter by observing UCMHs gravitationally such as pulsar timing, microlensing and so on, in some future observations.

• Received 15 May 2017

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.96.041301