Probing oscillations into sterile neutrinos with cosmology, astrophysics and experiments

2004/03/31 by Marco Cirelli, Guido Marandella, Alessandro Strumia +2 · 7 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Big Bang nucleosynthesis #COSMIC cancer database #Cosmic microwave background #Cosmic neutrino background #Cosmology #Neutrino #Neutrino Physics Research #Neutrino detector #Neutrino oscillation #Nucleosynthesis #Particle physics #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Physics #Solar neutrino #Sterile neutrino #Supernova #astro-ph #hep-ex #hep-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.nuclphysb.2004.11.056

published as Nucl.Phys.B708:215-267,2005 · 50 pages, many (14) figures. The text is divided into "results" and "technical details" sections. Final updated version

arxiv created 2004/11/29 · openalex publication_date 2004/12/21 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

We perform a thorough analysis of oscillation signals generated by one extra sterile neutrino, extending previous analyses done in simple limiting cases and including the effects of established oscillations among active neutrinos. We consider the following probes: solar, atmospheric, reactor and beam neutrinos, Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis (helium-4, deuterium), Cosmic Microwave Background, Large Scale Structure, supernovae, neutrinos from other astrophysical sources. We find no evidence for a sterile neutrino in present data, identify the still allowed regions, and study which future experiments can best probe them: sub-MeV solar experiments, more precise studies of CMB or BBN, future supernova explosions, etc. We discuss how the LSND hint is strongly disfavoured by the constraints of (standard) cosmology.

Citations

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Cited by

• Improved limits on sterile neutrino dark matter using full-sky Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor data
• The importance of observing astrophysical tau neutrinos
• Constraining mass spectra with sterile neutrinos from neutrinoless double beta decay, tritium beta decay, and cosmology
• The search for heavy Majorana neutrinos
• Effect of supersymmetry breaking in the mass varying neutrinos
• IceCube flavor ratios with identified astrophysical sources: towards improving new physics testability
• eV seesaw with four generations