Interactions of keV sterile neutrinos with matter
- Creators
- Ando, Shin'ichiro
- Kusenko, Alexander
Abstract
A sterile neutrino with mass of several keV is a well-motivated dark-matter candidate, and it can also explain the observed velocities of pulsars via anisotropic emission of sterile neutrinos from a cooling neutron star. We discuss the interactions of such relic particles with matter and comment on the prospects of future direct detection experiments. A relic sterile neutrino can interact, via sterile–active mixing, with matter fermions by means of electroweak currents, with the final state containing a relativistic active neutrino. The recoil momentum impacted onto a matter fermion is determined by the sterile neutrino mass and is enough to ionize atoms and flip the spins of nuclei. While this suggests a possibility of direct experimental detection, we calculate the rates and show that building a realistic detector of the required size would be a daunting challenge.
Additional Information
© 2010 The American Physical Society. Received 28 January 2010; published 18 June 2010. The work of S. A. was supported by Japan Society for Promotion of Science. The work of A. K. was supported by DOE Grant No. DE-FG03-91ER40662 and NASA ATFP Grant No. NNX08AL48G.Attached Files
Published - Ando2010p10561Phys_Rev_D.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 18968
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20100709-113928337
- Japan Society for Promotion of Science
- DE-FG03-91ER40662
- Department of Energy (DOE)
- NNX08AL48G
- NASA Astrophysics Theory and Fundamental Physics program (ATFP)
- Created
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2010-07-09Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2023-03-16Created from EPrint's last_modified field