Cosmological constraints on heavy sterile neutrinos

Abstract

We consider heavy sterile neutrinos νs , with mass in the range 10 MeV ∼ ms ∼ mπ ∼ 135 MeV, thermally produced in the early universe and freezing out after the QCD phase transition. The existence of these neutrinos may alter the value of the effective number of neutrino species N eff, measured by the cosmic microwave background (CMB), and the 4He production during the BBN. We provide a detailed account of the solution of the relevant Boltzmann equations and we identify the parameter space constrained by current Planck satellite data and forecast the parameter space probed by future Stage-4 ground-based CMB (CMB-S4) observations.