Cosmological radiation density with non-standard neutrino-electron interactions

Abstract

Neutrino non-standard interactions (NSI) with electrons are known to alter the picture of neutrino decoupling from the cosmic plasma. NSI modify both flavour oscillations through matter effects, and the annihilation and scattering between neutrinos and electrons and positrons in the thermal plasma. In view of the forthcoming cosmological observations, we perform a precision study of the impact of non-universal and flavour-changing NSI on the effective number of neutrinos, $N_{eff}$. We present the variation of $N_{eff}$ arising from the different NSI parameters and discuss the existing degeneracies among them, from cosmology alone and in relation to the current bounds from terrestrial experiments. Even though cosmology is generally less sensitive to NSI than these experiments, we find that future cosmological data would provide competitive and complementary constraints for some of the couplings and their combinations.

11 pages, 5 figures, 1 table

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• Searching for Axial Neutral Current Non-Standard Interactions of neutrinos by DUNE-like experiments
• How new physics affects primordial neutrinos decoupling: Direct Simulation Monte Carlo approach
• Big Bang Nucleosynthesis as a probe of non-standard neutrino interactions and non-unitary three-neutrino mixing
• Cosmological radiation density with non-standard neutrino-electron interactions
• New Interference Effects from Light Gauge Bosons in Neutrino-Electron Scattering