Minimal sterile neutrino dark matter

Letter
Open Access

Minimal sterile neutrino dark matter

Torsten Bringmann, Paul Frederik Depta, Marco Hufnagel, Jörn Kersten, Joshua T. Ruderman, and Kai Schmidt-Hoberg

Phys. Rev. D 107, L071702 – Published 24 April 2023

Abstract

We propose a novel mechanism to generate sterile neutrinos $ν_{s}$ in the early Universe, by converting ordinary neutrinos $ν_{α}$ in scattering processes $ν_{s} ν_{α} \to ν_{s} ν_{s}$ . After initial production by oscillations, this leads to an exponential growth in the $ν_{s}$ abundance. We show that such a production regime naturally occurs for self-interacting $ν_{s}$ , and that this opens up significant new parameter space where $ν_{s}$ make up all of the observed dark matter. Our results provide strong motivation to further push the sensitivity of X-ray line searches, and to improve on constraints from structure formation.

Received 7 September 2022
Revised 1 December 2022
Accepted 31 March 2023

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.107.L071702

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP³.

Published by the American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Particle dark matter

Sterile neutrinos

Particles & FieldsGravitation, Cosmology & Astrophysics

Authors & Affiliations

Torsten Bringmann ^1,2,*, Paul Frederik Depta ^3,†, Marco Hufnagel ^4,‡, Jörn Kersten ^5,6,§, Joshua T. Ruderman^7,∥, and Kai Schmidt-Hoberg ^8,¶

¹Department of Physics, University of Oslo, Box 1048, N-0316 Oslo, Norway
²Theoretical Physics Department, CERN, 1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland
³Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, Saupfercheckweg 1, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany
⁴Service de Physique Théorique, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Boulevard du Triomphe, CP225, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium
⁵Korea Institute for Advanced Study, Seoul 02455, Republic of Korea
⁶Department of Physics and Technology, University of Bergen, 5020 Bergen, Norway
⁷Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics, Department of Physics, New York University, New York, New York 10003, USA
⁸Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY, Notkestr. 85, 22607 Hamburg, Germany

^*torsten.bringmann@fys.uio.no
^†frederik.depta@mpi-hd.mpg.de
^‡marco.hufnagel@ulb.be
^§joern.kersten@uib.no
^∥ruderman@nyu.edu
^¶kai.schmidt-hoberg@desy.de

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Issue

Vol. 107, Iss. 7 — 1 April 2023

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