Searching sterile dark matter with x-ray telescopes

Abstract

Sterile neutrinos with masses in the keV range can be the cosmological dark matter, and they can also solve several other astrophysical puzzles. In particular, the anisotropic emission of sterile neutrinos from a supernova can explain the observed velocities of pulsars. The x-ray photons from the decays of the relic sterile neutrinos could have ionized the primordial gas, speeding up the molecular hydrogen production and, ultimately, the star formation. Precision x-ray spectroscopy can be used to search for this form of dark matter.