Sterile neutrino hot, warm, and cold dark matter

2001/01/31 by Kevork N. Abazajian, K. Abazajian, George M. Fuller +3 · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics #Big Bang nucleosynthesis #Cold dark matter #Cosmology #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Dark energy #Dark matter #Hot dark matter #Neutrino #Neutrino Physics Research #Neutrino oscillation #Nuclear physics #Nucleosynthesis #Particle physics #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Physics #Sterile neutrino #Supernova #Universe #Warm dark matter #astro-ph #hep-ex #hep-ph #nucl-ex #nucl-th

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.64.023501

published as Phys.Rev. D64 (2001) 023501 · 24 pages, including 8 figures. v3: to match version in PRD, added references and numerous minor changes. High resolution color figures available at http://superbeast.ucsd.edu/~kev/nucdm

arxiv created 2001/05/11 · openalex publication_date 2001/05/31 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

We calculate the incoherent resonant and non-resonant scattering production of sterile neutrinos in the early universe. We find ranges of sterile neutrino masses, vacuum mixing angles, and initial lepton numbers which allow these species to constitute viable hot, warm, and cold dark matter (HDM, WDM, CDM) candidates which meet observational constraints. The constraints considered here include energy loss in core collapse supernovae, energy density limits at big bang nucleosynthesis, and those stemming from sterile neutrino decay: limits from observed cosmic microwave background anisotropies, diffuse extragalactic background radiation, and ⁶Li/D overproduction. Our calculations explicitly include matter effects, both effective mixing angle suppression and enhancement (MSW resonance), as well as quantum damping. We for the first time properly include all finite temperature effects, dilution resulting from the annihilation or disappearance of relativistic degrees of freedom, and the scattering-rate-enhancing effects of particle-antiparticle pairs (muons, tauons, quarks) at high temperature in the early universe.

Citations

• Cosmic abundances of stable particles: Improved analysis
• Supersymmetric solution to the solar and atmospheric neutrino problems
• Recovery of the Power Spectrum of Mass Fluctuations from Observations of the Lyα Forest
• Black Holes, White Dwarfs, and Neutron Stars: The Physics of Compact Objects
• Resonant neutrino oscillations and stellar collapse
• Observation of a neutrino burst from the supernova SN1987A
• Three flavour neutrino oscillations in models with large extra dimensions
• A flat Universe from high-resolution maps of the cosmic microwave background radiation
• Sterile neutrinos as dark matter

Cited by

• The concordance cosmic star formation rate: implications from and for the supernova neutrino and gamma ray backgrounds
• Constraints on composite Dirac neutrinos from observations of galaxy clusters