Published February 7, 2023 | Version v1
Journal article Open

Constraining feeble neutrino interactions with ultralight dark matter

  • 1. Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
  • 2. University of Chicago
  • 3. Stanford University

Description

If ultralight ($≪eV$), bosonic dark matter couples to right-handed neutrinos, active neutrino masses and mixing angles depend on the ambient dark matter density. When the neutrino Majorana mass, induced by the dark matter background, is small compared to the Dirac mass, neutrinos are "pseudo-Dirac"fermions that undergo oscillations between nearly degenerate active and sterile states. We present a complete cosmological history for such a scenario and find severe limits from a variety of terrestrial and cosmological observables. For scalar masses in the "fuzzy" dark matter regime ($∼10^{-20} eV$), these limits exclude couplings of order $10^{-30}$, corresponding to Yukawa interactions comparable to the gravitational force between neutrinos and surpassing equivalent limits on time variation in scalar-induced electron and proton couplings.

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PhysRevD.107.035006.pdf

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Additional details

Identifiers

DOI
10.1103/PhysRevD.107.035006
Other
oai:uchicago.tind.io:12120

Funding

U.S. Department of Energy
DE-AC02-07CH11359
Simons Foundation
824870
U.S. Department of Energy
DE-SC0012012
National Science Foundation
PHY2014215
U.S. Department of Energy
100495
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
GBMF7946
National Science Foundation
PHY-1607611
European Union
Horizon 2020 research and innovation program

UChicago Information

Division(s)
Physical Sciences Division
Department(s)
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Center(s) or Institute(s)
Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics