2015/06/17 by E. Figueroa‐Feliciano, A. J. Anderson, Figueroa-Feliciano, Enectali +21 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO) #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE) #Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM) #Superconducting and THz Device Technology
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1506.05519
openalex publication_date 2015/06/17 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
High-resolution X-ray spectrometers onboard suborbital sounding rockets can\nsearch for dark matter candidates that produce X-ray lines, such as decaying\nkeV-scale sterile neutrinos. Even with exposure times and effective areas far\nsmaller than XMM-Newton and Chandra observations, high-resolution, wide\nfield-of-view observations with sounding rockets have competitive sensitivity\nto decaying sterile neutrinos. We analyze a subset of the 2011 observation by\nthe X-ray Quantum Calorimeter instrument centered on Galactic coordinates l =\n165, b = -5 with an effective exposure of 106 seconds, obtaining a limit on the\nsterile neutrino mixing angle of sin2(2 theta) < 7.2e-10 at 95% CL for a 7 keV\nneutrino. Better sensitivity at the level of sin2(2 theta) ~ 2.1e-11 at 95 %\nCL for a 7 keV neutrino is achievable with future 300-second observations of\nthe galactic center by the Micro-X instrument, providing a definitive test of\nthe sterile neutrino interpretation of the reported 3.56 keV excess from galaxy\nclusters.\n