Raising the Optical Depth to Reionization with Dark Matter Decay
DESI DR2 baryon acoustic oscillation measurements have sharpened a discrepancy with cosmic microwave background (CMB) inferences that can be recast as a preference for a reionization optical depth of $\tau_{\rm reio}\simeq 0.09$, well above the $\simeq 0.06$ inferred from large-scale CMB polarization measurements. Here...