Dark Radiation and Decaying Matter

Abstract

Recent cosmological measurements favour additional relativistic energy density beyond the one provided by the three active neutrinos and photons of the Standard Model (SM). This is often referred to as "dark radiation", suggesting the need of new light states in the theory beyond those of the SM. In this paper, we study and numerically explore the alternative possibility that this increase comes from the decay of some new form of heavy matter into the SM neutrinos. We study the constraints on the decaying matter density and its lifetime, using data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, the South Pole Telescope, measurements of the Hubble constant at present time, the results from high-redshift Type-I supernovae and the information on the Baryon Acoustic Oscillation scale. We, moreover, include in our analysis the information on the presence of additional contributions to the expansion rate of the Universe at the time of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. We compare the results obtained in this decaying matter scenario with those obtained with the standard analysis in terms of a constant $N_{\mathrm{eff}}$.

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• The CosmoVerse White Paper: Addressing observational tensions in cosmology with systematics and fundamental physics
• New Light Species and the CMB
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• Dark radiation from particle decay: cosmological constraints and opportunities
• $N_{\mathrm{eff}}$ in low-scale seesaw models versus the lightest neutrino mass
• Dark Radiation or Warm Dark Matter from long lived particle decays in the light of Planck
• Dark Radiation candidates after Planck
• How to relax the cosmological neutrino mass bound
• Robustness of cosmic neutrino background detection in the cosmic microwave background
• Asymptotic behavior of a scalar field with an arbitrary potential trapped on a Randall-Sundrum's braneworld: the effect of a negative dark radiation term on a Bianchi I brane
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• Dark radiation and dark matter in supersymmetric axion models with high reheating temperature
• Decay of multiple dark matter particles to dark radiation in different epochs does not alleviate the Hubble tension
• The highest energy neutrinos: first evidence for cosmic origin
• Is the CMB telling us that dark matter is weaker than weakly interacting?
• Non-thermal Hot Dark Matter from Inflaton/Moduli Decay: The Momentum Distribution and Relaxing the Cosmological Mass Bound
• A testable scenario of WIMPZILLA with Dark Radiation
• Daughters mimic sterile neutrinos (almost!) perfectly