Cosmological dependence of sterile neutrino dark matter with self-interacting neutrinos

Abstract

Unexplored interactions of neutrinos could be the key to understanding the nature of the dark matter (DM). In particular, active neutrinos with new self-interactions can produce keV-mass sterile neutrinos that account for the whole of the DM through the Dodelson-Widrow mechanism for a large range of active-sterile mixing values. This production typically occurs before Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) in a yet uncharted era of the Universe. We assess how the mixing range for keV-mass sterile neutrino DM is affected by the uncertainty in the early Universe pre-BBN cosmology.This is particularly relevant for identifying the viable parameter space of sterile neutrino searches allowed by all astrophysical limits, as well as for cosmology, since the detection of a sterile neutrino could constitute the first observation of a particle providing information about the pre-BBN epoch. We find that the combined uncertainties in the early Universe cosmology and neutrino interactions significantly expand the allowed parameter space for sterile neutrinos that can constitute the whole of the DM.