Sterile neutrino dark matter: A tale of weak interactions in the strong coupling epoch

Abstract

We perform a detailed study of the weak interactions of standard model neutrinos with the primordial plasma and their effect on the resonant production of sterile neutrino dark matter. Motivated by issues in cosmological structure formation on small scales, and reported X-ray signals that could be due to sterile neutrino decay, we consider $7$ keV-scale sterile neutrinos. Oscillation-driven production of such sterile neutrinos occurs at temperatures $T\gtrsim 100$ MeV, where we study two significant effects of weakly charged species in the primordial plasma: (1) the redistribution of an input lepton asymmetry; (2) the opacity for active neutrinos. We calculate the redistribution analytically above and below the quark-hadron transition, and match with lattice QCD calculations through the transition. We estimate opacities due to tree level processes involving leptons and quarks above the quark-hadron transition, and the most important mesons below the transition. We report final sterile neutrino dark matter phase space densities that are significantly influenced by these effects, and yet relatively robust to remaining uncertainties in the nature of the quark-hadron transition. We also provide transfer functions for cosmological density fluctuations with cutoffs at $k\simeq 10h{\mathrm{Mpc}}^{-1}$, that are relevant to galactic structure formation.

28 pages, 11 figures, code repository at https://github.com/ntveem/sterile-dm

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• Precision Early Universe Thermodynamics made simple: $N_{\mathrm{eff}}$ and Neutrino Decoupling in the Standard Model and beyond
• Gravitational probes of dark matter physics
• 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
• A deep search for decaying dark matter with XMM-Newton blank-sky observations
• Baryogenesis and Dark Matter from $B$ Mesons
• Constraining Non-Cold Dark Matter Models with the Global 21-cm Signal
• Cutoff in the Lyman-$\alpha$ forest power spectrum: warm IGM or warm dark matter?
• NuSTAR Tests of Sterile-Neutrino Dark Matter: New Galactic Bulge Observations and Combined Impact
• keV Sterile Neutrino Dark Matter from Singlet Scalar Decays: The Most General Case
• Long-Exposure NuSTAR Constraints on Decaying Dark Matter in the Galactic Halo
• The Lyman-$\alpha$ forest as a diagnostic of the nature of the dark matter
• Closing in on Resonantly Produced Sterile Neutrino Dark Matter
• Warm Dark Matter Constraints Using Milky-Way Satellite Observations and Subhalo Evolution Modeling
• A Thermal Neutrino Portal to Sub-MeV Dark Matter
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• Searches for Long-Lived Particles at the Future FCC-ee
• Thermal QCD Axions across Thresholds
• Resonant Sterile Neutrino Dark Matter in the Local and High-z Universe
• Fundamental physics with the Hubble Frontier Fields: constraining Dark Matter models with the abundance of extremely faint and distant galaxies
• Hints against the cold and collisionless nature of dark matter from the galaxy velocity function
• Properties of Resonantly Produced Sterile Neutrino Dark Matter Subhalos
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• Addressing the too big to fail problem with baryon physics and sterile neutrino dark matter
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• New Constraints on the Mass of Fermionic Dark Matter from Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxies
• Dodelson-Widrow Production of Sterile Neutrino Dark Matter with Non-Trivial Initial Abundance
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• Production of heavy sterile neutrinos from vector boson decay at electroweak temperatures
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• Strong limits on keV-scale galactic sterile neutrino dark matter with stray light from NuSTAR after 11 years of operation
• Influence of ~7 keV sterile neutrino dark matter on the process of reionization
• New Physics Search at the CEPC: a General Perspective
• Derivation of the sterile neutrino Boltzmann equation from quantum kinetics
• Mixed Warm Dark Matter Constraints using Milky Way Satellite Galaxy Counts
• Sterile neutrino dark matter: Impact of active-neutrino opacities
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• Constraining Sterile Neutrino Dark Matter in the Milky Way Halo with Swift-XRT
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• Cosmic Structure Strikes Back: The Elimination of Vector-Mediated Nonstandard Interaction Models as a Mechanism for Sterile Neutrino Dark Matter Production
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• Cosmological constraints on sterile neutrino Dark Matter production mechanisms