A sterile neutrino with a mass of several keV can account for cosmological dark matter, as well as explain the observed velocities of pulsars. We show that x rays produced by the decays of these relic sterile neutrinos can boost the production of molecular hydrogen, which can speed up the cooling of gas and the early star formation, which can, in turn, lead to a reionization of the Universe at a high enough redshift to be consistent with the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe results.
Download full-text PDF |
Source |
|---|---|
| http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.96.091301 | DOI Listing |
Publication Analysis
Top Keywords
Similar Publications
Using tremendous photon statistics gained with the stray light aperture of the NuSTAR telescope over 11 years of operation, we set strong limits on the emission of close to monochromatic photons from the radiative decays of putative dark matter sterile neutrinos in the Milky Way. In the energy range of 3-20 keV covered by the NuSTAR, the obtained limits reach the bottom edge of theoretical predictions of realistic models where sterile neutrinos are produced in the early Universe. Only a small region is left to explore, if the sterile neutrinos form the entire dark matter component.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSearch for an eV-Scale Sterile Neutrino Using Improved High-Energy ν_{μ} Event Reconstruction in IceCube.
Phys Rev Lett
November 2024
Department of Physics and Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA.
Article Synopsis
- * The study introduces enhanced modeling techniques for neutrino flux and detector response, and it distinguishes between starting (inside) and throughgoing (outside) neutrino interaction events to improve energy resolution.
- * The findings indicate a best-fit point for the 3+1 model with sin²(2θ_{24})=0.16 and Δm_{41}²=3.5 eV², supporting previous studies while showing consistency with no evidence of sterile neutrinos, as reflected
Dark Population Transfer Mechanism for Sterile Neutrino Dark Matter.
Phys Rev Lett
November 2024
Department of Physics, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093-0319, USA.
We present a mechanism for producing a cosmologically significant relic density of one or more sterile neutrinos. This scheme invokes two steps: First, a population of "heavy" sterile neutrinos is created by scattering-induced decoherence of active neutrinos. Second, this population is transferred, via sterile neutrino self-interaction-mediated scatterings and decays, to one or more lighter mass (∼10 keV to ∼1 GeV) sterile neutrinos that are far more weakly (or not at all) mixed with active species and could constitute dark matter.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSearch for a Sub-eV Sterile Neutrino Using Daya Bay's Full Dataset.
Phys Rev Lett
August 2024
Institute of High Energy Physics, Beijing.
This Letter presents results of a search for the mixing of a sub-eV sterile neutrino with three active neutrinos based on the full data sample of the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment, collected during 3158 days of detector operation, which contains 5.55×10^{6} reactor ν[over ¯]_{e} candidates identified as inverse beta-decay interactions followed by neutron capture on gadolinium. The analysis benefits from a doubling of the statistics of our previous result and from improvements of several important systematic uncertainties.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFResurrecting Hitomi for Decaying Dark Matter and Forecasting Leading Sensitivity for XRISM.
Phys Rev Lett
May 2024
Berkeley Center for Theoretical Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
Article Synopsis
- The Hitomi x-ray satellite was designed to search for sterile neutrino dark matter through its unique spectrometers, but it was lost shortly after launch.
- The only data analyzed for dark matter decay came from the Perseus cluster, and this new study used archival Hitomi data to look for dark matter decaying in the Milky Way.
- The newly launched XRISM satellite is projected to have superior sensitivity in analyzing future data, specifically targeting dark matter masses between 1 to 18 keV, with significant implications for theories involving sterile neutrinos and heavy axionlike particles.
Want AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?
Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!