A sterile neutrino with mass of several keV is a well-motivated dark-matter candidate, and it can also explain the observed velocities of pulsars via anisotropic emission of sterile neutrinos from a cooling neutron star. We discuss the interactions of such relic particles with matter and comment on the prospects of future direct detection experiments. A relic sterile neutrino can interact, via sterile–active mixing, with matter fermions by means of electroweak currents, with the final state containing a relativistic active neutrino. The recoil momentum impacted onto a matter fermion is determined by the sterile neutrino mass and is enough to ionize atoms and flip the spins of nuclei. While this suggests a possibility of direct experimental detection, we calculate the rates and show that building a realistic detector of the required size would be a daunting challenge.

• Received 28 January 2010

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.81.113006