Reducing cosmological small scale structure via a large dark matter-neutrino interaction: constraints and consequences

Abstract

Cold dark matter explains a wide range of data on cosmological scales. However, there has been a steady accumulation of evidence for discrepancies between simulations and observations at scales smaller than galaxy clusters. Solutions to these small scale structure problems may indicate that simulations need to improve how they include feedback from baryonic matter, or may imply that dark matter properties differ from the standard cold, noninteracting scenario. One promising way to affect structure formation on small scales is a relatively strong coupling of dark matter to neutrinos. We construct an experimentally viable, simple, renormalizable, model with new interactions between neutrinos and dark matter. We show that addressing the small scale structure problems requires dark matter with a mass that is tens of MeV, and a present-day density determined by an initial particle-antiparticle asymmetry in the dark sector. Generating a sufficiently large dark matter-neutrino coupling requires a new heavy neutrino with a mass around 100 MeV. The heavy neutrino is mostly sterile but has a substantial $\tau$ neutrino component, while the three nearly massless neutrinos are partly sterile. We provide the first discussion of how such dark matter-neutrino interactions affect neutrino (especially $\tau$ neutrino) phenomenology. This model can be tested by future astrophysical, particle physics, and neutrino oscillation data. A feature in the neutrino energy spectrum and flavor content from a future nearby supernova would provide strong evidence of neutrino-dark matter interactions. Promising signatures include anomalous matter effects in neutrino oscillations due to nonstandard interactions and a component of the $\tau$ neutrino with mass around 100 MeV.

32 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (23)

• Updated fit to three neutrino mixing: status of leptonic CP violation
• Is dark matter with long-range interactions a solution to all small-scale problems of ΛCDM cosmology?
• Measurement of the neutrino mass splitting and flavor mixing by MINOS
• Resonant Dark Forces and Small Scale Structure
• Inference of the Cold Dark Matter substructure mass function at z=0.2 using strong gravitational lenses
• BBN And The CMB Constrain Neutrino Coupled Light WIMPs
• Limits on sterile neutrino mixing using atmospheric neutrinos in Super-Kamiokande
• Using the Milky Way satellites to study interactions between cold dark matter and radiation
• Dark Matter Heating and Early Core Formation in Dwarf Galaxies
• Scattering, Damping, and Acoustic Oscillations: Simulating the Structure of Dark Matter Halos with Relativistic Force Carriers
• Signatures of sub-GeV dark matter beams at neutrino experiments
• Leptophobic Dark Matter at Neutrino Factories
• Cosmology with self-interacting sterile neutrinos and dark matter - A pseudoscalar model
• Resolution of puzzles from the LSND, KARMEN, and MiniBooNE experiments
• Search for heavy neutrinos in $K^{+}\to {\mu }^{+}{\nu }_H$ decays
• $\nu \Lambda$MDM: A Model for Sterile Neutrino and Dark Matter Reconciles Cosmological and Neutrino Oscillation Data after BICEP2
• Bounds on Non-Standard Neutrino Interactions Using PINGU
• Neutrino Portal Dark Matter: From Dwarf Galaxies to IceCube
• Re-examining the Too-Big-To-Fail Problem for Dark Matter Haloes with Central Density Cores
• High energy neutrino telescopes as a probe of the neutrino mass mechanism
• Summary report of MINSIS workshop in Madrid
• Determination of |Vus| from tau Decays
• Recent Borexino results and prospects for the near future

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Monochromatic dark neutrinos and boosted dark matter in noble liquid direct detection