Annual Modulation of Cosmic Relic Neutrinos

Abstract

The cosmic neutrino background (CvB), produced about one second after the Big Bang, permeates the Universe today. New technological advancements make neutrino capture on beta-decaying nuclei (NCB) a clear path forward towards the detection of the CvB. We show that gravitational focusing by the Sun causes the expected neutrino capture rate to modulate annually. The amplitude and phase of the modulation depend on the phase-space distribution of the local neutrino background, which is perturbed by structure formation. These results also apply to searches for sterile neutrinos at NCB experiments. Gravitational focusing is the only source of modulation for neutrino capture experiments, in contrast to dark-matter direct-detection searches where the Earth's time-dependent velocity relative to the Sun also plays a role.

6 pages, 2 figures

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Cited by in corpus (9)

• X-ray Line from the Dark Transition Electric Dipole
• Measuring Anisotropies in the Cosmic Neutrino Background
• Discriminating between Thermal and Nonthermal Cosmic Relic Neutrinos through Annual Modulation at PTOLEMY
• A review of neutrino decoupling from the early universe to the current universe
• Massive Fermi Gas in the Expanding Universe
• PTOLEMY's test of generalized neutrino interactions: unveiling challenges and constraints
• Quarks to Cosmos: Particles and Plasma in Cosmological evolution
• Numerical treatment of annual modulation of relic neutrinos
• Studying Both the Universe and Neutrinos Themselves Using Cosmic and Astrophysical Neutrinos