scholarly journals Sterile Neutrinos as Dark Matter: Alternative Production Mechanisms in the Early Universe

Universe ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (8) ◽  
pp. 264
Author(s):  
Daniel Boyanovsky

We study various production mechanisms of sterile neutrinos in the early universe beyond and within the standard model. We obtain the quantum kinetic equations for production and the distribution function of sterile-like neutrinos at freeze-out, from which we obtain free streaming lengths, equations of state and coarse grained phase space densities. In a simple extension beyond the standard model, in which neutrinos are Yukawa coupled to a Higgs-like scalar, we derive and solve the quantum kinetic equation for sterile production and analyze the freeze-out conditions and clustering properties of this dark matter constituent. We argue that in the mass basis, standard model processes that produce active neutrinos also yield sterile-like neutrinos, leading to various possible production channels. Hence, the final distribution function of sterile-like neutrinos is a result of the various kinematically allowed production processes in the early universe. As an explicit example, we consider production of light sterile neutrinos from pion decay after the QCD phase transition, obtaining the quantum kinetic equation and the distribution function at freeze-out. A sterile-like neutrino with a mass in the keV range produced by this process is a suitable warm dark matter candidate with a free-streaming length of the order of few kpc consistent with cores in dwarf galaxies.

2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Raymond T. Co ◽  
Lawrence J. Hall ◽  
Keisuke Harigaya

Abstract Adding an axion-like particle (ALP) to the Standard Model, with a field velocity in the early universe, simultaneously explains the observed baryon and dark matter densities. This requires one or more couplings between the ALP and photons, nucleons, and/or electrons that are predicted as functions of the ALP mass. These predictions arise because the ratio of dark matter to baryon densities is independent of the ALP field velocity, allowing a correlation between the ALP mass, ma, and decay constant, fa. The predicted couplings are orders of magnitude larger than those for the QCD axion and for dark matter from the conventional ALP misalignment mechanism. As a result, this scheme, ALP cogenesis, is within reach of future experimental ALP searches from the lab and stellar objects, and for dark matter.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (9) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolás Bernal ◽  
Andrea Donini ◽  
Miguel G. Folgado ◽  
Nuria Rius

Abstract We study for the first time the case in which Dark Matter (DM) is made of Feebly Interacting Massive Particles (FIMP) interacting just gravitationally with the standard model particles in an extra-dimensional Randall-Sundrum scenario. We assume that both the dark matter and the standard model are localized in the IR-brane and only interact via gravitational mediators, namely the graviton, the Kaluza-Klein gravitons and the radion. We found that in the early Universe DM could be generated via two main processes: the direct freeze-in and the sequential freeze-in. The regions where the observed DM relic abundance is produced are largely compatible with cosmological and collider bounds.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole F. Bell ◽  
Matthew J. Dolan ◽  
Leon S. Friedrich ◽  
Michael J. Ramsey-Musolf ◽  
Raymond R. Volkas

Abstract We examine the collider and dark matter phenomenology of the Standard Model extended by a hypercharge-zero SU(2) triplet scalar and gauge singlet scalar. In particular, we study the scenario where the singlet and triplet are both charged under a single ℤ2 symmetry. We find that such an extension is capable of generating the observed dark matter density, while also modifying the collider phenomenology such that the lower bound on the mass of the triplet is smaller than in minimal triplet scalar extensions to the Standard Model. A high triplet mass is in tension with the parameter space that leads to novel electroweak phase transitions in the early universe. Therefore, the lower triplet masses that are permitted in this extended model are of particular importance for the prospects of successful electroweak baryogenesis and the generation of gravitational waves from early universe phase transitions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 81 (8) ◽  
Author(s):  
Asmaa Abada ◽  
Nicolás Bernal ◽  
Antonio E. Cárcamo Hernández ◽  
Xabier Marcano ◽  
Gioacchino Piazza

AbstractWe propose an economical model addressing the generation of the Inverse Seesaw mechanism from the spontaneous breaking of a local $$U(1)_{B-L}$$ U ( 1 ) B - L , with the Majorana masses of the sterile neutrinos radiatively generated from the dark sector. The field content of the Standard Model is extended by neutral scalars and fermionic singlets, and the gauge group is extended with a $$U(1)_{B-L}$$ U ( 1 ) B - L and a discrete $${\mathbb {Z}}_4$$ Z 4 symmetries. Besides dynamically generating the Inverse Seesaw and thus small masses to the active neutrinos, our model offers two possible dark matter candidates, one scalar and one fermionic, stable thanks to a remnant $${\mathbb {Z}}_2$$ Z 2 symmetry. Our model complies with bounds and constraints form dark matter direct detection, invisible Higgs decays and $$Z'$$ Z ′ collider searches for masses of the dark sector at the TeV scale.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Aad ◽  
◽  
B. Abbott ◽  
D. C. Abbott ◽  
A. Abed Abud ◽  
...  

Abstract A search for dark matter is conducted in final states containing a photon and missing transverse momentum in proton-proton collisions at $$ \sqrt{s} $$ s = 13 TeV. The data, collected during 2015–2018 by the ATLAS experiment at the CERN LHC, correspond to an integrated luminosity of 139 fb−1. No deviations from the predictions of the Standard Model are observed and 95% confidence-level upper limits between 2.45 fb and 0.5 fb are set on the visible cross section for contributions from physics beyond the Standard Model, in different ranges of the missing transverse momentum. The results are interpreted as 95% confidence-level limits in models where weakly interacting dark-matter candidates are pair-produced via an s-channel axial-vector or vector mediator. Dark-matter candidates with masses up to 415 (580) GeV are excluded for axial-vector (vector) mediators, while the maximum excluded mass of the mediator is 1460 (1470) GeV. In addition, the results are expressed in terms of 95% confidence-level limits on the parameters of a model with an axion-like particle produced in association with a photon, and are used to constrain the coupling gaZγ of an axion-like particle to the electroweak gauge bosons.


Universe ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (8) ◽  
pp. 276
Author(s):  
Muhammad Zahid Mughal ◽  
Iftikhar Ahmad ◽  
Juan Luis García Guirao

In this review article, the study of the development of relativistic cosmology and the introduction of inflation in it as an exponentially expanding early phase of the universe is carried out. We study the properties of the standard cosmological model developed in the framework of relativistic cosmology and the geometric structure of spacetime connected coherently with it. The geometric properties of space and spacetime ingrained into the standard model of cosmology are investigated in addition. The big bang model of the beginning of the universe is based on the standard model which succumbed to failure in explaining the flatness and the large-scale homogeneity of the universe as demonstrated by observational evidence. These cosmological problems were resolved by introducing a brief acceleratedly expanding phase in the very early universe known as inflation. The cosmic inflation by setting the initial conditions of the standard big bang model resolves these problems of the theory. We discuss how the inflationary paradigm solves these problems by proposing the fast expansion period in the early universe. Further inflation and dark energy in fR modified gravity are also reviewed.


2016 ◽  
Vol 31 (18) ◽  
pp. 1630027
Author(s):  
Ikuo S. Sogami

With multi-spinor fields which behave as triple-tensor products of the Dirac spinors, the Standard Model is extended so as to embrace three families of ordinary quarks and leptons in the visible sector and an additional family of exotic quarks and leptons in the dark sector of our Universe. Apart from the gauge and Higgs fields of the Standard Model symmetry G, new gauge and Higgs fields of a symmetry isomorphic to G are postulated to exist in the dark sector. It is the bi-quadratic interaction between visible and dark Higgs fields that opens a main portal to the dark sector. Breakdowns of the visible and dark electroweak symmetries result in the Higgs boson with mass 125 GeV and a new boson which can be related to the diphoton excess around 750 GeV. Subsequent to a common inflationary phase and a reheating period, the visible and dark sectors follow weakly-interacting paths of thermal histories. We propose scenarios for dark matter in which no dark nuclear reaction takes place. A candidate for the main component of the dark matter is a stable dark hadron with spin 3/2, and the upper limit of its mass is estimated to be 15.1 GeV/c2.


2006 ◽  
Vol 15 (12) ◽  
pp. 2267-2278 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. V. AHLUWALIA-KHALILOVA

Assuming the validity of the general relativistic description of gravitation on astrophysical and cosmological length scales, we analytically infer that the Friedmann–Robertson–Walker cosmology with Einsteinian cosmological constant, and a vanishing spatial curvature constant, unambiguously requires a significant amount of dark matter. This requirement is consistent with other indications for dark matter. The same space–time symmetries that underlie the freely falling frames of Einsteinian gravity also provide symmetries which, for the spin one half representation space, furnish a novel construct that carries extremely limited interactions with respect to the terrestrial detectors made of the standard model material. Both the "luminous" and "dark" matter turn out to be residents of the same representation space but they derive their respective "luminosity" and "darkness" from either belonging to the sector with (CPT)2 = +𝟙, or to the sector with (CPT)2 = -𝟙.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (12) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucien Heurtier ◽  
Fei Huang ◽  
Tim M.P. Tait

Abstract In the framework where the strong coupling is dynamical, the QCD sector may confine at a much higher temperature than it would in the Standard Model, and the temperature-dependent mass of the QCD axion evolves in a non-trivial way. We find that, depending on the evolution of ΛQCD, the axion field may undergo multiple distinct phases of damping and oscillation leading generically to a suppression of its relic abundance. Such a suppression could therefore open up a wide range of parameter space, resurrecting in particular axion dark-matter models with a large Peccei-Quinn scale fa ≫ 1012 GeV, i.e., with a lighter mass than the standard QCD axion.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Maximilian Ruhdorfer ◽  
Ennio Salvioni ◽  
Andreas Weiler

We study for the first time the collider reach on the derivative Higgs portal, the leading effective interaction that couples a pseudo Nambu-Goldstone boson (pNGB) scalar Dark Matter to the Standard Model. We focus on Dark Matter pair production through an off-shell Higgs boson, which is analyzed in the vector boson fusion channel. A variety of future high-energy lepton colliders as well as hadron colliders are considered, including CLIC, a muon collider, the High-Luminosity and High-Energy versions of the LHC, and FCC-hh. Implications on the parameter space of pNGB Dark Matter are discussed. In addition, we give improved and extended results for the collider reach on the marginal Higgs portal, under the assumption that the new scalars escape the detector, as motivated by a variety of beyond the Standard Model scenarios.


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