Constraining sterile neutrino dark matter with phase space density observations

We apply phase space density considerations to obtain lower bounds on the mass of the sterile neutrino as a dark matter candidate. The bounds are different for non-resonant production, resonant production in the presence of lepton asymmetry and production in decays of heavier particles. In the former case our bound is comparable to but independent of the Lyman-alpha bound, and together with the x-ray upper limit it disfavors non-resonantly produced sterile neutrino dark matter. An interesting feature of the latter case is that warm dark matter may be composed of heavy particles.