Neutrinos and cosmology: a lifetime relationship
We consider the example of neutrino decays to illustrate the profound relation between laboratory neutrino physics and cosmology. Two case studies are presented: In the first one, we show how the high precision cosmic microwave background spectral data collected by the FIRAS instrument on board of COBE, when combined with Lab data, have greatly changed bounds on the radiative neutrino lifetime. In the second case, we speculate on the consequence for neutrino physics of the cosmological detection of neutrino masses even as small as {approx}0.06 eV, the lower limit guaranteed by neutrino oscillation experiments. We show that a detection at that level would improve by many orders of magnitude the existing limits on neutrino lifetime, and as a consequence on some models of neutrino secret interactions.
- Research Organization:
- Fermi National Accelerator Lab. (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC02-07CH11359
- OSTI ID:
- 934560
- Report Number(s):
- FERMILAB-CONF-08-144-A; TRN: US0803903
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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