Mirror matter is a dark matter candidate. In this paper, we reexamine the linear regime of density perturbation growth in a universe containing mirror dark matter. Taking adiabatic scale-invariant perturbations as the input, we confirm that the resulting processed power spectrum is richer than for the more familiar cases of cold, warm and hot dark matter. The new features include a maximum at a certain scale ${\lambda }_{\max },$ collisional damping below a smaller characteristic scale ${\lambda }_S^{\prime },$ with oscillatory perturbations between the two. These scales are functions of the fundamental parameters of the theory. In particular, they decrease for decreasing x, the ratio of the mirror plasma temperature to that of the ordinary. For $x\sim 0.2,$ the scale ${\lambda }_{\max }$ becomes galactic. Mirror dark matter therefore leads to bottom-up large scale structure formation, similar to conventional cold dark matter, for $x\lesssim \mathrm{0.2.}$ Indeed, the smaller the value of x, the closer mirror dark matter resembles standard cold dark matter during the linear regime. The differences pertain to scales smaller than ${\lambda }_S^{\prime }$ in the linear regime, and generally in the nonlinear regime because mirror dark matter is chemically complex and to some extent dissipative. Lyman-α forest data and the early reionization epoch established by WMAP may hold the key to distinguishing mirror dark matter from WIMP-style cold dark matter.

• Received 10 April 2003

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.68.023518