Cosmology Favoring Extra Radiation and Sub-eV Mass Sterile Neutrinos as an Option

Journal Article · Fri Oct 29 00:00:00 EDT 2010 · Physical Review Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PHYSREVLETT.105.181301· OSTI ID:21471040

Hamann, Jan; Hannestad, Steen ^[1]; Raffelt, Georg G ^[2]; Tamborra, Irene ^[2]; Wong, Yvonne Y. Y. ^[3]

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1. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Aarhus, 8000 Aarhus C (Denmark)
2. Max-Planck-Institut fuer Physik (Werner-Heisenberg-Institut), Foehringer Ring 6, 80805 Muenchen (Germany)
3. Institut fuer Theoretische Teilchenphysik und Kosmologie, RWTH Aachen, 52056 Aachen (Germany)

Precision cosmology and big-bang nucleosynthesis mildly favor extra radiation in the Universe beyond photons and ordinary neutrinos, lending support to the existence of low-mass sterile neutrinos. We use the WMAP 7-year data, small-scale cosmic microwave background observations from ACBAR, BICEP, and QuAD, the SDSS 7th data release, and measurement of the Hubble parameter from HST observations to derive credible regions for the assumed common mass scale m{sub s} and effective number N{sub s} of thermally excited sterile neutrino states. Our results are compatible with the existence of one or perhaps two sterile neutrinos, as suggested by LSND and MiniBooNE, if m{sub s} is in the sub-eV range.

• OSTI ID: 21471040
• Journal Information: Physical Review Letters, Journal Name: Physical Review Letters Journal Issue: 18 Vol. 105; ISSN 0031-9007; ISSN PRLTAO
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

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