Axion-Assisted Production of Sterile Neutrino Dark Matter

Abstract

Sterile neutrinos can be generated in the early universe through oscillations with active neutrinos and represent a popular and well-studied candidate for our universe's dark matter. Stringent constraints from X-ray and gamma-ray line searches, however, have excluded the simplest of such models. In this letter, we propose a novel alternative to the standard scenario in which the mixing angle between the sterile and active neutrinos is a dynamical quantity, induced through interactions with a light axion-like field. As the energy density of the axion-like particles is diluted by Hubble expansion, the degree of mixing is reduced at late times, suppressing the decay rate and easily alleviating any tension with X-ray or gamma-ray constraints. We present a simple model which illustrates the phenomenology of this scenario, and also describe a framework in which the QCD axion is responsible for the production of sterile neutrinos in the early universe.

5 pages, 3 figures

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Cited by in corpus (19)

• Neutrino dark matter and the Higgs portal: improved freeze-in analysis
• Thermalizing sterile neutrino dark matter
• Light Dark Matter from Leptogenesis
• Cosmology-friendly time-varying neutrino masses via the sterile neutrino portal
• Self-interacting sterile neutrino dark matter: the heavy-mediator case
• Cosmology and time dependent parameters induced by misaligned light scalar
• Cosmologically Varying Kinetic Mixing
• Phenomenology of $keV$ sterile neutrino in minimal extended seesaw
• Neutrino Masses from Outer Space
• Twin Sterile Neutrino Dark Matter
• Sterile neutrino dark matter from right-handed neutrino oscillations
• Interaction of the axionic dark matter, dynamic aether, spinor and gravity fields as an origin of oscillations of the fermion effective mass
• Fab-Four cosmography to tackle the Hubble tension
• On the Tremaine-Gunn Limit with Mass-Varying Particles
• Hints of new physics from stars
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• Theoretical and phenomenological consequences of active and sterile neutrino within Beyond Standard Model framework
• Sterile neutrino dark matter production in presence of non-standard neutrino self-interactions: an EFT approach
• Memory burden effect of regular primordial black holes