Production Of Sterile Neutrinos Research Articles

MeV-scale reheating temperature and cosmological production of light sterile neutrinos

We investigate how sterile neutrinos with a range of masses influence cosmology in MeV-scale reheating temperature scenarios. By computing the production of sterile neutrinos through the combination of mixing and scattering in the early Universe, we find that light sterile neutrinos, with masses and mixings as inferred from short-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments, are consistent with big-bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) and cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation for the reheating temperature of \U0001d4aa(1) MeV if the parent particle responsible for reheating decays into electromagnetic components (radiative decay). In contrast, if the parent particle mainly decays into hadrons (hadronic decay), the bound from BBN becomes more stringent. In this case, the existence of the light sterile neutrinos can be cosmologically excluded, depending on the mass and the hadronic branching ratio of the parent particle.

Scalar induced resonant sterile neutrino production in the early Universe

It has been recently suggested \cite{Bezrukov:2017ike,Bezrukov:2018wvd} that a cosmic scalar field can completely change the keV-scale sterile neutrino production in the early Universe. Its effect may, for various parameter choices, either suppress sterile neutrino production and make moderate active-sterile mixing cosmologically acceptable, or increase the production and generate considerable dark matter component out of sterile neutrino with otherwise negligible mixing with SM. In this paper we provide analytic estimates complementing and providing details of the numerical calculations performed in \cite{Bezrukov:2018wvd} in the case of resonant amplification of the sterile neutrino production. We also discuss phenomenological and theoretical issues related to the successful implementation of this idea in fully realistic extensions of the Standard Model of particle physics.

Tau lepton asymmetry by sterile neutrino emission—moving beyond one-zone supernova models

The mixing of active neutrinos with their sterile counterparts with keV mass is known to have a potentially major impact on the energy loss from the supernova core. By relying on a set of three static hydrodynamical backgrounds mimicking the early accretion phase and the Kelvin-Helmoltz cooling phase of a supernova, we develop the first self-consistent, radial- and time-dependent treatment of νs-ντ mixing in the dense stellar core. We follow the flavor evolution by including ordinary matter effects, collisional production of sterile neutrinos, as well as reconversions of sterile states into active ones. The dynamical feedback of the sterile neutrino production on the matter background leads to the development of a ντ-ν̄τ asymmetry (Yντ) that grows in time until it reaches a value larger than 0.15. Our results hint towards significant implications for the supernova physics, and call for a self-consistent modeling of the sterile neutrino transport in the supernova core to constrain the mixing parameters of sterile neutrinos.

Visible sterile neutrinos as the earliest relic probes of cosmology

A laboratory detection of a sterile neutrino could provide the first indication of the evolution of the Universe before Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN), an epoch yet untested. Such “visible” sterile neutrinos are observable in upcoming experiments such as KATRIN/TRISTAN and HUNTER in the keV mass range and PTOLEMY and others in the eV mass range. A set of standard assumptions is typically made about cosmology before the temperature of the Universe was 5 MeV. However, non-standard pre-BBN cosmologies based on alternative assumptions could arise in motivated theoretical models and are equally in agreement with all existing data. We revisit the production of sterile neutrinos of mass 0.01 eV to 1 MeV in two examples of such models: scalar-tensor and low reheating temperature pre-BBN cosmologies. In both of them, the putative 3.5 keV X-ray signal line corresponds to a sterile neutrino with a mixing large enough to be tested in upcoming laboratory experiments. Additionally, the cosmological/astrophysical upper limits on active-sterile neutrino mixings are significantly weaker than in the standard pre-BBN cosmology, which shows that these limits are not robust. For example, in the scalar-tensor case the potential signal regions implied by the LSND and MiniBooNE short-baseline as well as the DANSS and NEOS reactor experiments are entirely not bound by cosmological restrictions. Our work highlights that sterile neutrinos may constitute a sensitive probe of the pre-BBN epoch.

Hidden treasures: Sterile neutrinos as dark matter with miraculous abundance, structure formation for different production mechanisms, and a solution to the σ8 problem

We discuss numerous mechanisms for production of sterile neutrinos, which can account for all or a fraction of dark matter, and which can range from warm to effectively cold dark matter, depending on the cosmological scenario. We investigate production by Higgs boson decay, $(B-L)$ gauge boson production at high temperature, as well as production via resonant and nonresonant neutrino oscillations. We calculate the effects on structure formation in these models, some for the first time. If two populations of sterile neutrinos, one warm and one cold, were produced by different mechanisms, or if sterile neutrinos account for only a fraction of dark matter, while the remainder is some other cold dark matter particle, the resulting multi-component dark matter may alleviate some problems in galaxy formation. We examine the X-ray constraints and the candidate signal at 3.5 keV. Finally, we also show that the $\sigma_8$ problem can be a signature of fractional dark matter in the form of sterile neutrinos in several mechanisms.

Inflation, (p)reheating and neutrino anomalies: production of sterile neutrinos with secret interactions

A number of experimental anomalies involving neutrinos hint towards the existence of at least an extra (a very light) sterile neutrino. However, such a species, appreciably mixing with the active neutrinos, is disfavored by different cosmological observations like Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN), Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) and Large Scale Structure (LSS). Recently, it was shown that the presence of additional interactions in the sterile neutrino sector via light bosonic mediators can make the scenario cosmologically viable by suppressing the production of the sterile neutrinos from active neutrinos via matter-like effect caused by the mediator. This mechanism works assuming the initial population of this sterile sector to be negligible with respect to that of the Standard Model (SM) particles, before the production from active neutrinos. However, there is fair chance that such bosonic mediators may couple to the inflaton and can be copiously produced during (p)reheating epoch. Consequently, they may ruin this assumption of initial small density of the sterile sector. In this article we, starting from inflation, investigate the production of such a sterile sector during (p)reheating in a large field inflationary scenario and identify the parameter region that allows for a viable early Universe cosmology.

Self-interacting sterile neutrino dark matter: The heavy-mediator case

For active-sterile mixing to be responsible for the full relic abundance of dark matter additional new physics is needed beyond the keV-scale sterile neutrino itself. The extra ingredient we consider here is the presence of self-interactions among the sterile neutrinos. We examine whether active-to-sterile conversion is amplified enough in this scenario that the observed abundance of dark matter can be obtained with a subconstraint mixing angle. This turns out never to be the case in the region we explore: either self-interactions have too small an impact and cannot escape bounds on the mass and mixing angle, or they have too great an impact and cause dark matter to be overproduced. The sharp transition from marginal to excessive effectiveness occurs because a resonance criterion is met in the effective in-medium mixing angle. Once the system goes resonant the game is as good as over, as nonlinearity in the Boltzmann equation leads to runaway production of sterile neutrinos, beginning at a plasma temperature of a few hundred MeV and typically ending at a few tens of MeV. The scenario is therefore ruled out largely by its own dynamics. In this study, we focus exclusively on mediators heavier than $\ensuremath{\sim}1\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{GeV}$; future work will extend the analysis to lighter mediators, allowing for contact to be made with the kinds of scenarios motivated by issues of small-scale structure.

Production of keV sterile neutrinos in supernovae: New constraints and gamma-ray observables

We study the production of sterile neutrinos in supernovae, focusing in particular on the keV--MeV mass range, which is the most interesting range if sterile neutrinos are to account for the dark matter in the Universe. Focusing on the simplest scenario in which sterile neutrinos mixes only with muon or tau neutrino, we argue that the production of keV--MeV sterile neutrinos can be strongly enhanced by a Mikheyev--Smirnov--Wolfenstein (MSW) resonance, so that a substantial flux is expected to emerge from a supernova, even if vacuum mixing angles between active and sterile neutrinos are tiny. Using energetics arguments, this yields limits on the sterile neutrino parameter space that reach down to mixing angles of the order of $\sin^2 2\theta \lesssim 10^{-14}$ and are up to an order of magnitude stronger than those from X-ray observations. While supernova limits suffer from larger systematic uncertainties than X-ray limits they apply also to scenarios in which sterile neutrinos are not abundantly produced in the early Universe. We also compute the flux of $\mathcal{O}(\text{MeV})$ photons expected from the decay of sterile neutrinos produced in supernovae, but find that it is beyond current observational reach even for a nearby supernova.

Sterile neutrino dark matter from right-handed neutrino oscillations

We study a scenario where sterile neutrino (either warm or cold) dark matter (DM) is produced through (nonresonant) oscillations among right-handed neutrinos (RHNs) and can constitute the whole DM in the Universe, in contrast to the conventional sterile neutrino production through its mixing with the left-handed neutrinos. The lightest RHN can be sterile neutrino DM whose mixing with left-handed neutrinos is sufficiently small while heavier RHNs can have non-negligible mixings with left-handed neutrinos to explain the neutrino masses by the seesaw mechanism. We also demonstrate that, in our scenario, the production of sterile RHN DM from the decay of a heavier RHN is subdominant compared with the RHN oscillation production due to the X-ray and small-scale structure constraints.

KeV sterile neutrino with large mixing angle is still alive

We study production of keV scale sterile neutrinos with large mixing with the Standard Model sector [1]. Conventional mechanism of sterile neutrino generation in the early Universe leads to overproduction of the Dark Matter and strong X-ray signal from sterile neutrino decay. It makes anticipated groundbased experiments on direct searches of sterile-active mixing unfeasible. We argue that for models with a hidden sector coupled to the sterile neutrinos cosmological and astrophysical constraints can be significantly alleviated. In developed scenario a phase transition in the hidden sector modifies the standard oscillation picture and leads to significantly larger mixing angles, thus opening new perspectives for future neutrino experiments such as Troitsk v-mass and KATRIN. This work was made in collaboration with Fedor Bezrukov and Dmitry Gorbunov.

Astrophysical neutrinos flavored with beyond the Standard Model physics

We systematically study the allowed parameter space for the flavor composition of astrophysical neutrinos measured at Earth, including beyond the Standard Model theories at production, during propagation, and at detection. One motivation is to illustrate the discrimination power of the next-generation neutrino telescopes such as IceCube-Gen2. We identify several examples that lead to potential deviations from the standard neutrino mixing expectation such as significant sterile neutrino production at the source, effective operators modifying the neutrino propagation at high energies, dark matter interactions in neutrino propagation, or non-standard interactions in Earth matter. IceCube-Gen2 can exclude about 90% of the allowed parameter space in these cases, and hence will allow to efficiently test and discriminate models. More detailed information can be obtained from additional observables such as the energy-dependence of the effect, fraction of electron antineutrinos at the Glashow resonance, or number of tau neutrino events.

Sterile neutrinos with non-standard secret interactions imprints on Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropies

Short baseline laboratory (SBL) anomalies have shown preference for light sterile neutrinos with eV masses. These particles, if confirmed, would be produced in the early universe and would add their contribution to the relativistic energy density basically increasing the effective number of extra relativistic species (Neff). It has been shown that when the matter potential produced by the sterile interactions becomes smaller than the vacuum oscillation frequency, sterile neutrinos are plentifully produced by the scattering effects in the sterile neutrino sector. This behaviour, however, leads to a ΔNeff ≃ 1 which is in tension at 3 − 5σ with the actual constraints given by the latest Cosmic Microwave Background radiation (CMB) observations. In order to avoid the thermalization of eV sterile neutrinos in the early universe, secret interactions between the sterile and active sectors mediated by a massive vector boson (MX < MW) have been proposed. In particular, interactions mediated by a gauge boson having MX < 10 MeV would suppress the sterile neutrino production for T > 0.1 eV and seem to save the cosmological constraints coming from big-bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) and mass bounds. In this framework, cosmological observations represent a powerful tool to constrain neutrino physics complementary to laboratory experiments. In particular, observations of the CMB have the potential to constrain the properties of relic neutrinos, as well as of additional light relic particles in the universe. In this work we present the effects of the strength of the interaction on the neutrino fluid perturbations and on the CMB anisotropies power spectrum.

Axion-assisted production of sterile neutrino dark matter

Sterile neutrinos can be generated in the early universe through oscillations with active neutrinos and represent a popular and well-studied candidate for our universe's dark matter. Stringent constraints from X-ray and gamma-ray line searches, however, have excluded the simplest of such models. In this letter, we propose a novel alternative to the standard scenario in which the mixing angle between the sterile and active neutrinos is a dynamical quantity, induced through interactions with a light axion-like field. As the energy density of the axion-like particles is diluted by Hubble expansion, the degree of mixing is reduced at late times, suppressing the decay rate and easily alleviating any tension with X-ray or gamma-ray constraints. We present a simple model which illustrates the phenomenology of this scenario, and also describe a framework in which the QCD axion is responsible for the production of sterile neutrinos in the early universe.

Production of heavy sterile neutrinos from vector boson decay at electroweak temperatures

In the standard model extended with a seesaw mass matrix, we study the production of sterile neutrinos from the decay of vector bosons at $T\simeq M_{W,Z}$. We derive a general quantum kinetic equation for the production of sterile neutrinos and their effective mixing angles valid in a wide range of temperature, to all orders in interactions of the standard model, and to leading order mixing angle $\theta \ll 1$. Production rates and effective mixing angles depend sensitively on helicity. Positive helicity states interact more weakly with the medium and their effective mixing angle is not modified significantly whereas the mixing angle for negative helicity is strongly suppressed by the medium. If $M_s \lesssim 8.35\,\mathrm{MeV}$, there are fewer states with negative helicity produced than those with positive helicity. There is an MSW resonance in the absence of lepton asymmetry, but is screened by the damping rate, without production enhancement. Negative helicity states freeze-out at $T^-_f\simeq 5\,\mathrm{GeV}$ and positive helicity states freeze-out at $T^+_f \simeq 8\,\mathrm{GeV}$, both distributions are far from thermal. Negative helicity states feature a broader momentum distribution than that for those with positive helicity. Sterile neutrinos produced via vector boson decay do not satisfy the abundance, lifetime and cosmological constraints to be the sole dark matter component in the universe but might solve the $^{7}Li$ problem, albeit at the very edge of the possible parameter space. A heavy sterile neutrino with a mass of a few MeV could decay into light sterile neutrinos, of a few keV in mass, that contribute to warm dark matter. We argue that heavy sterile neutrinos with lifetime $\leq 1/H_0$ reach local thermodynamic equilibrium.

Sterile neutrino dark matter production

Sterile neutrinos provide active neutrinos with masses and mixing, and hence is one of the well-motivated candidate for dark matter. We discuss the sterile neutrino production mechanisms operating in the early Universe and show that additional scalar coupled to sterile neutrino can significantly change the situation, making moderate sterile-neutrino mixing and small sterile neutrino masses consistent with current cosmological and astrophysical bounds. Further searches for a narrow line in galactic X -rays and even direct searches for keV-scale sterile neutrinos in particle physics experiments can probe the suggested setup.

Suppression of cosmological sterile neutrino production by altered dispersion relations

Big Bang Nucleosynthesis imposes stringent bounds on light sterile neutrinos mixing with the active flavors. Here we discuss how altered dispersion relations can weaken such bounds and allow compatibility of new sterile neutrino degrees of freedom with a successful generation of the light elements in the early Universe.

The Sterile Neutrino as Dark Matter

We review how the sterile neutrino can be a dark-matter candidate. We study three possible production mechanisms for sterile-neutrino dark-matter: the Dodelson-Widrow (DW) mechanism, the Shi-Fuller (SF) mechanism, and production via the decay of the scalar field. Sterile-neutrino dark matter produced only through the DW mechanism can be eliminated based on a combination of X-ray and Lyman-$\alpha$ measurements. The SF mechanism can ameliorate the problem occurring in the case of DW mechanism. The other alternative is the production of sterile neutrinos via the decay of the scalar field. By estimating the average momentum of the sterile neutrino, we investigate whether sterile neutrinos can be warm dark matter or not. We briefly discuss how sterile neutrinos can be probed indirectly by using X-ray telescopes that can detect the photon line signal produced from radiative decay of the sterile neutrino.

Sterile neutrino dark matter: Weak interactions in the strong coupling epoch

We perform a detailed study of the weak interactions of standard model neutrinos with the primordial plasma and their effect on the resonant production of sterile neutrino dark matter. Motivated by issues in cosmological structure formation on small scales, and reported X-ray signals that could be due to sterile neutrino decay, we consider $7$ keV-scale sterile neutrinos. Oscillation-driven production of such sterile neutrinos occurs at temperatures $T \gtrsim 100$ MeV, where we study two significant effects of weakly charged species in the primordial plasma: (1) the redistribution of an input lepton asymmetry; (2) the opacity for active neutrinos. We calculate the redistribution analytically above and below the quark-hadron transition, and match with lattice QCD calculations through the transition. We estimate opacities due to tree level processes involving leptons and quarks above the quark-hadron transition, and the most important mesons below the transition. We report final sterile neutrino dark matter phase space densities that are significantly influenced by these effects, and yet relatively robust to remaining uncertainties in the nature of the quark-hadron transition. We also provide transfer functions for cosmological density fluctuations with cutoffs at $k \simeq 10 \ h \ {\rm Mpc}^{-1}$, that are relevant to galactic structure formation.

Satellite galaxies in semi-analytic models of galaxy formation with sterile neutrino dark matter

The sterile neutrino is a viable dark matter candidate that can be produced in the early Universe via non-equilibrium processes, and would therefore possess a highly non-thermal spectrum of primordial velocities. In this paper we analyse the process of structure formation with this class of dark matter particles. To this end we construct primordial dark matter power spectra as a function of the lepton asymmetry, $L_6$, that is present in the primordial plasma and leads to resonant sterile neutrino production. We compare these power spectra with those of thermally produced dark matter particles and show that resonantly produced sterile neutrinos are much colder than their thermal relic counterparts. We also demonstrate that the shape of these power spectra is not determined by the free-streaming scale alone. We then use the power spectra as an input for semi-analytic models of galaxy formation in order to predict the number of luminous satellite galaxies in a Milky Way-like halo. By assuming that the mass of the Milky Way halo must be no more than $2\times10^{12}M_{\odot}$ (the adopted upper bound based on current astronomical observations) we are able to constrain the value of $L_6$ for $M_s\le 8$~keV. We also show that the range of $L_6$ that is in best agreement with the 3.5~keV line (if produced by decays of 7~keV sterile neutrino) requires that the Milky Way halo has a mass no smaller than $1.5\times10^{12}M_{\odot}$. Finally, we compare the power spectra obtained by direct integration of the Boltzmann equations for a non-resonantly produced sterile neutrino with the fitting formula of Viel~et~al. and find that the latter significantly underestimates the power amplitude on scales relevant to satellite galaxies.

IMPACT OF NEUTRINO FLAVOR OSCILLATIONS ON THE NEUTRINO-DRIVEN WIND NUCLEOSYNTHESIS OF AN ELECTRON-CAPTURE SUPERNOVA

Neutrino oscillations, especially to light sterile states, can affect nucleosynthesis yields because of their possible feedback effect on the electron fraction (Ye). For the first time, we perform nucleosynthesis calculations for neutrino-driven wind trajectories from the neutrino-cooling phase of an 8.8 electron-capture supernova (SN), whose hydrodynamic evolution was computed in spherical symmetry with sophisticated neutrino transport and whose Ye evolution was post-processed by including neutrino oscillations between both active and active–sterile flavors. We also take into account the α-effect as well as weak magnetism and recoil corrections in the neutrino absorption and emission processes. We observe effects on the Ye evolution that depend in a subtle way on the relative radial positions of the sterile Mikheyev–Smirnov–Wolfenstein resonances, on collective flavor transformations, and on the formation of α particles. For the adopted SN progenitor, we find that neutrino oscillations, also to a sterile state with eV mass, do not significantly affect the element formation and in particular cannot make the post-explosion wind outflow neutron-rich enough to activate a strong r-process. Our conclusions become even more robust when, in order to mimic equation-of-state-dependent corrections due to nucleon potential effects in the dense-medium neutrino opacities, six cases with reduced Ye in the wind are considered. In these cases, despite the conversion of active neutrinos to sterile neutrinos, Ye increases or is not significantly lowered compared to the values obtained without oscillations and active flavor transformations. This is a consequence of a complicated interplay between sterile-neutrino production, neutrino–neutrino interactions, and α-effect.