Cosmological Implications of Light Sterile Neutrinos produced after the QCD Phase Transition

Abstract

We study the production of sterile neutrinos in the early universe from $\pi \to l{\nu }_s$ shortly after the QCD phase transition in the absence of a lepton asymmetry while including finite temperature corrections to the $\pi$ mass and decay constant $f_{\pi }$. Sterile neutrinos with masses $\lesssim 1MeV$ produced via this mechanism freeze-out at $T_f\simeq 10MeV$ with a distribution function that is highly non-thermal and features a sharp enhancement at low momentum thereby making this species \emph{cold} even for very light masses. Dark matter abundance constraints from the CMB and phase space density constraints from the most dark matter dominated dwarf spheroidal galaxies provide upper and lower bounds respectively on combinations of mass and mixing angles. For $\pi \to \mu {\nu }_s$, the bounds lead to a narrow region of compatibility with the latest results from the $3.55\mathrm{KeV}$ line. The non-thermal distribution function leads to free-streaming lengths (today) in the range of $\sim \mbox{few kpc}$ consistent with the observation of cores in dwarf galaxies. For sterile neutrinos with mass $\lesssim 1eV$ that are produced by this reaction, the most recent accelerator and astrophysical bounds on $U_{ls}$ combined with the non-thermal distribution function suggests a substantial contribution from these sterile neutrinos to $N_{eff}$.

arXiv comment32 pages, 8 figures, new references and corrected typos

References in corpus (73)

• Planck 2013 results. XVI. Cosmological parameters
• Evidence for Neutrino Oscillations from the Observation of Electron Anti-neutrinos in a Muon Anti-Neutrino Beam
• Sterile Neutrinos as Dark Matter
• Too big to fail? The puzzling darkness of massive Milky Way subhaloes
• Cold collapse and the core catastrophe
• Halo Formation in Warm Dark Matter Models
• The phase diagram of dense QCD
• The Core-Cusp Problem
• A New Dark Matter Candidate: Non-thermal Sterile Neutrinos
• Detection of An Unidentified Emission Line in the Stacked X-ray spectrum of Galaxy Clusters
• An unidentified line in X-ray spectra of the Andromeda galaxy and Perseus galaxy cluster
• A Method for Measuring (Slopes of) the Mass Profiles of Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxies
• The role of sterile neutrinos in cosmology and astrophysics
• Sterile Neutrino Hot, Warm, and Cold Dark Matter
• Improved Search for ${\bar{\nu }}_{\mu }\to {\bar{\nu }}_e$ Oscillations in the MiniBooNE Experiment
• The properties of warm dark matter haloes
• The QCD phase transition with physical-mass, chiral quarks
• Sterile neutrinos: the dark side of the light fermions
• The $\nu$MSM, Inflation, and Dark Matter
• Dark-matter sterile neutrinos in models with a gauge singlet in the Higgs sector
• A precision calculation of the effective number of cosmological neutrinos
• Emergence of Coherent Long Wavelength Oscillations After a Quench: Application to QCD
• Formation and structure of halos in a warm dark matter cosmology
• Too Big to Fail in the Local Group
• Sterile neutrino dark matter bounds from galaxies of the Local Group
• Large Scale Structure Tests of Warm Dark Matter
• New Dark Matter Physics: Clues from Halo Structure
• Halo Cores and Phase Space Densities: Observational Constraints on Dark Matter Physics and Structure Formation
• Dark Matter from Early Decays
• Constraints on 3.55 keV line emission from stacked observations of dwarf spheroidal galaxies
• Resonantly-Produced 7 keV Sterile Neutrino Dark Matter Models and the Properties of Milky Way Satellites
• Phase transitions in the early and the present Universe
• Neutrinos And Big Bang Nucleosynthesis
• Propagation of Cool Pions
• Search for a Light Sterile Neutrino at Daya Bay
• The emptiness of voids: yet another over-abundance problem for the LCDM model
• Bounds on heavy sterile neutrinos revisited
• Constraints on dark matter particles from theory, galaxy observations and N-body simulations
• Constraining Sterile Neutrino Warm Dark Matter with Chandra Observations of the Andromeda Galaxy
• Increasing Neff with particles in thermal equilibrium with neutrinos
• Bulk QCD Thermodynamics and Sterile Neutrino Dark Matter
• Pion Dynamics at Finite Temperature
• Next decade of sterile neutrino studies
• Equivalent Neutrinos, Light WIMPs, and the Chimera of Dark Radiation
• Clustering properties of a sterile neutrino dark matter candidate
• The mass of the dark matter particle from theory and observations
• Light sterile neutrino production in the early universe with dynamical neutrino asymmetries
• Finite temperature effects on the neutrino decoupling in the early Universe
• Small-scale structure formation properties of chilled sterile neutrinos as dark matter
• 3.5 keV X-rays as the "21 cm line" of dark atoms, and a link to light sterile neutrinos
• The sizes of mini-voids in the local universe: an argument in favor of a warm dark matter model?
• Quantum WDM fermions and gravitation determine the observed galaxy structures
• Improved Treatment of Cosmic Microwave Background Fluctuations Induced by a Late-decaying Massive Neutrino
• Warm dark matter primordial spectra and the onset of structure formation at redshift z
• Pions at Finite Temperature from QCD Sum Rules
• How pi0 -> gamma gamma changes with temperature
• Nearly degenerate heavy sterile neutrinos in cascade decay: mixing and oscillations
• Free streaming in mixed dark matter
• Relic neutrinos: Physically consistent treatment of effective number of neutrinos and neutrino mass
• Searching for sterile neutrinos from $\pi$ and $K$ decays
• A review on axions and the strong CP problem
• The Pion Decay Constants and the Rho-Meson Mass at Finite Temperature in the Hidden Local Symmetry
• Scattering of soft, cool pions
• Neutrino Oscillations
• Constraining Sterile Neutrinos Using Reactor Neutrino Experiments
• Pion Decay Constant at Finite Temperature in the Nonlinear Sigma Model
• Space-time evolution of heavy sterile neutrinos in cascade decays
• Quark-Gluon Plasma as the Possible Source of Cosmological Dark Radiation
• Daughters mimic sterile neutrinos (almost!) perfectly
• Time evolution of cascade decay
• Nonequilibrium pion dynamics near the critical point in a constituent quark model
• Charged lepton mixing via heavy sterile neutrinos
• Chiral symmetry and mesons in hot and dense matter: recent developments

Cited by in corpus (28)

• Sterile Neutrino Dark Matter
• A White Paper on keV Sterile Neutrino Dark Matter
• New Constraints on Sterile Neutrino Dark Matter from $NuSTAR$ M31 Observations
• (Almost) Closing the $\nu$MSM Sterile Neutrino Dark Matter Window with NuSTAR
• "Non-cold" dark matter at small scales: a general approach
• Cold keV dark matter from decays and scatterings
• Sterile neutrino dark matter: A tale of weak interactions in the strong coupling epoch
• keV Sterile Neutrino Dark Matter from Singlet Scalar Decays: Basic Concepts and Subtle Features
• keV Sterile Neutrino Dark Matter from Singlet Scalar Decays: The Most General Case
• Diluted equilibrium sterile neutrino dark matter
• Sterile Neutrino Dark Matter from Freeze-In
• Warm Dark Matter Constraints Using Milky-Way Satellite Observations and Subhalo Evolution Modeling
• Improved Limits on Sterile Neutrino Dark Matter using Full-Sky Fermi Gamma-Ray Burst Monitor Data
• Dodelson-Widrow Production of Sterile Neutrino Dark Matter with Non-Trivial Initial Abundance
• Sterile neutrino Dark Matter production from scalar decay in a thermal bath
• Parity Problem of the Scotogenic Neutrino Model
• Neutrino dark matter and the Higgs portal: improved freeze-in analysis
• Neutrino Masses and Sterile Neutrino Dark Matter from the PeV Scale
• A Couplet from Flavored Dark Matter
• The surprising influence of late charged current weak interactions on Big Bang Nucleosynthesis
• Production of heavy sterile neutrinos from vector boson decay at electroweak temperatures
• Cosmological Imprints of Frozen-In Light Sterile Neutrinos
• A short survey of matter-antimatter evolution in the primordial universe
• Quark-Gluon Plasma as the Possible Source of Cosmological Dark Radiation
• The case for mixed dark matter from sterile neutrinos
• Cosmological bounces, cyclic universes, and effective cosmological constant in Einstein-Cartan-Dirac-Maxwell theory
• Warm Dark Matter Galaxies with Central Supermassive Black-Holes
• Warm Dark Matter from Higher-Dimensional Gauge Theories