Gravitational production of sterile neutrinos
Fuente:
arXiv
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| Autori principali: | , , |
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| Natura: | Preprint |
| Pubblicazione: |
2023
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| _version_ | 1866911828267761664 |
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| author | Koutroulis, Fotis Lebedev, Oleg Pokorski, Stefan |
| author_facet | Koutroulis, Fotis Lebedev, Oleg Pokorski, Stefan |
| contents | We consider gravitational production of singlet fermions such as sterile neutrinos during and after inflation. The production efficiency due to classical gravity is suppressed by the fermion mass. Quantum gravitational effects, on the other hand, are expected to break conformal invariance of the fermion sector by the Planck scale-suppressed operators irrespective of the mass. We find that such operators are very efficient in fermion production immediately after inflation, generating a significant background of stable or long-lived feebly interacting particles. This applies, in particular, to sterile neutrinos which can constitute cold non-thermal dark matter for a wide range of masses, including the keV scale. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2310_15906 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2023 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Gravitational production of sterile neutrinos Koutroulis, Fotis Lebedev, Oleg Pokorski, Stefan High Energy Physics - Phenomenology Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics We consider gravitational production of singlet fermions such as sterile neutrinos during and after inflation. The production efficiency due to classical gravity is suppressed by the fermion mass. Quantum gravitational effects, on the other hand, are expected to break conformal invariance of the fermion sector by the Planck scale-suppressed operators irrespective of the mass. We find that such operators are very efficient in fermion production immediately after inflation, generating a significant background of stable or long-lived feebly interacting particles. This applies, in particular, to sterile neutrinos which can constitute cold non-thermal dark matter for a wide range of masses, including the keV scale. |
| title | Gravitational production of sterile neutrinos |
| topic | High Energy Physics - Phenomenology Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.15906 |