Revisiting cosmological bounds on sterile neutrinos
- Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology (IPPP), Department of Physics, Durham University, Durham DH1 3LE (United Kingdom)
- Departamento and Instituto de Física Teórica (IFT), UAM/CSIC, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, C/ Nicolás Cabrera 13-15, E-28049 Cantoblanco, Madrid (Spain)
- Instituto de Física Corpuscular (IFIC), CSIC-Universitat de València, Apartado de Correos 22085, E-46071 Valencia (Spain)
- Dipartimento di Fisica e Science della Terra, Università di Ferrara and INFN, sezione di Ferrara, Polo Scientifico e Tecnologico, Edificio C Via Saragat, 1, I-44122 Ferrara (Italy)
We employ state-of-the art cosmological observables including supernova surveys and BAO information to provide constraints on the mass and mixing angle of a non-resonantly produced sterile neutrino species, showing that cosmology can effectively rule out sterile neutrinos which decay between BBN and the present day. The decoupling of an additional heavy neutrino species can modify the time dependence of the Universe's expansion between BBN and recombination and, in extreme cases, lead to an additional matter-dominated period; while this could naively lead to a younger Universe with a larger Hubble parameter, it could later be compensated by the extra radiation expected in the form of neutrinos from sterile decay. However, recombination-era observables including the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), the shift parameter R{sub CMB} and the sound horizon r{sub s} from Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) severely constrain this scenario. We self-consistently include the full time-evolution of the coupled sterile neutrino and standard model sectors in an MCMC, showing that if decay occurs after BBN, the sterile neutrino is essentially bounded by the constraint sin{sup 2}θ ∼< 0.026 (m{sub s}/eV){sup −2}.
- OSTI ID:
- 22525904
- Journal Information:
- Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Journal Name: Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics Journal Issue: 04 Vol. 2015; ISSN 1475-7516
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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