Captures of Hot and Warm Sterile Antineutrino Dark Matter on EC-decaying Ho-163 Nuclei

Abstract

Capturing low-energy electron antineutrinos on radioactive Ho-163 nuclei, which decay into Dy-163 via electron capture (EC), is a noteworthy opportunity to detect relic sterile antineutrinos. Such hypothetical particles are more or less implied by current experimental and cosmological data, and they might be a part of hot dark matter or a candidate for warm dark matter in the Universe. Using the isotope Ho-163 as a target and assuming reasonable active-sterile antineutrino mixing angles, we calculate the capture rate of relic electron antineutrinos against the corresponding EC-decay background in the presence of sterile antineutrinos at the sub-eV or keV mass scale. We show that the signature of hot or warm sterile antineutrino dark matter should in principle be observable, provided the target is big enough and the energy resolution is good enough.

16 pages, 6 figures, more discussions and references added. To appear in JCAP

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Cited by in corpus (16)

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• A White Paper on keV Sterile Neutrino Dark Matter
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• Warm Dark Matter in Low Scale Left-Right Theory
• keV Neutrino Model Building
• Q_6 flavor symmetry model for the extension of the minimal standard model by three right-handed sterile neutrinos
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• Detection Prospects of the Cosmic Neutrino Background
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• Heavy sterile neutrino in dark matter searches
• The spectroscopy of solar sterile neutrinos
• Direct detection of relic active and sterile neutrinos