We present a testable mechanism of low-scale baryogenesis and dark matter production in which neither baryon nor lepton number are violated. Charged $D$ mesons are produced out-of-equilibrium at tens of MeV temperatures. The $D$ mesons quickly undergo CP-violating decays to charged pions, which then decay into dark-sector leptons without violating lepton number. To transfer this lepton asymmetry to the baryon asymmetry, the dark leptons scatter on additional dark-sector states charged under lepton and baryon number. Amusingly, this transfer proceeds without electroweak sphalerons, which are no longer active at such low scales. We present two example models which can achieve this transfer while remaining consistent with current limits. The required amount of CP violation in charged $D$ meson decays, while currently allowed, will be probed by colliders. Additionally, the relevant decays of charged pions to dark-sector leptons have been constrained by the PIENU and PSI experiments and will be further explored in upcoming experiments.
An analysis of sub-MeV dark photon as dark matter is given which is achieved with two hidden sectors, one of which interacts directly with the visible sector while the second has only indirect coupling with the visible sector. The formalism for the evolution of three bath temperatures for the visible sector and the two hidden sectors is developed and utilized in solution of Boltzmann equations coupling the three sectors. We present exclusion plots where the sub-MeV dark photon can be dark matter. The analysis can be extended to a multi-temperature universe with multiple hidden sectors and mult…
Strangness production processes can balance natural strangeness decay in the early hadronic Universe. Comparing to the characteristic Hubble time $1/H$, the reaction rates for $μ^\pm+ν_μ\rightarrow K^\pm$, $l^-+l^+\rightarrowϕ$, and $π+π\rightarrow K$ in sequence become slower than expansion rate at $T=33.9\,\mathrm{MeV}$, $T=25\,\mathrm{MeV}$ and $T=20\,\mathrm{MeV}$ respectively. This means that in the antibaryon annihilation epoch near to $T\simeq 40\,\mathrm{MeV}$ strangeness is in chemical equilibrium.
Neutrino physics in the early Universe is key to our understanding of later cosmological stages, such as primordial nucleosynthesis (BBN) or the formation of large-scale structures. The coming decade promises new experimental results to explore and constrain cosmological models even more precisely - which requires robust theoretical predictions. This PhD thesis presents a study of the evolution of neutrinos in the first seconds after the Big Bang, more precisely when the temperature of the Universe is of the order of one mega-electronvolt. This evolution is obtained numerically by solving kine…
Dark Photons in the Early Universe: From Thermal Production to Cosmological Constraints
Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院高能物理研究所）；School of Physical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学物理科学学院）
Thermal relics lighter than an MeV contribute to the energy density of the universe at the time of nucleosynthesis and recombination. Constraints on extra radiation degrees of freedom typically exclude even the simplest of such dark sectors. We explore the possibility that a sub-MeV dark sector entered equilibrium with the Standard Model after neutrino-photon decoupling, which significantly weakens these constraints and naturally arises in the context of neutrino mass generation through the spontaneous breaking of lepton number. Acquiring an adequate dark matter abundance independently motivat…
We solve numerically the Boltzmann equation in the early universe in the presence of a constant electric field and find the electrical conductivity $σ$ in the range $1\MeV\lsim T\lsim M_W$. The main contribution to $σ$ is shown to be due to leptonic interactions. For $T\lsim 100\MeV$ we find $σ\simeq 0.76T$ while at $T\simeq M_W$ we obtain $σ\simeq 6.7T$
Growing amount of observations indicate presence of intrinsically faint quasar subgroup (a few % of known quasars) with noncosmological quantized redshift. Here we find an analytical solution of Einstein equations describing bubbles made from axions with periodic interaction potential. Such particles are currently considered as one of the leading dark matter candidate. The bubble interior possesses equal gravitational redshift which can have any value between zero and infinity. Quantum pressure supports the bubble against collapse and yields states stable on the scale more then hundreds millio…
We investigate the strange particle composition of the early Universe in the hadron epoch $T_h\approx 150\ge T\ge 10$\,MeV. We study strangeness yield in thermal and chemical equilibrium constrained by prescribed entropy per baryon in a charge neutral and strangeness neutral $\langle s-\bar s\rangle$ Universe. Turning to kinetic processes in a Hubble expanding Universe, we determine conditions at which individual strangeness producing reactions fall out of detailed balance between decay and back-reaction strangeness production rates in presence of decreasing temperature $T$; we allow for weak,…
We study how the oscillations of the neutrinos affect their thermalization process during the reheating period with temperature O(1) MeV in the early universe. We follow the evolution of the neutrino density matrices and investigate how the predictions of big bang nucleosynthesis vary with the reheating temperature. For the reheating temperature of several MeV, we find that including the oscillations makes different predictions, especially for $^4$He abundance. Also, the effects on the lower bound of the reheating temperature from cosmological observations are discussed.
We show that the evolution of magnetic fields in a primordial plasma, filled with Standard Model particles, at temperatures T > 10 MeV is strongly affected by the quantum chiral anomaly -- an effect that has been neglected previously. Although reactions equilibrating left and right-chiral electrons are in deep thermal equilibrium for T < 80 TeV, an asymmetry between these particle develops in the presence of strong magnetic fields. This results in magnetic helicity transfer from shorter to longer scales. This also leads to an effective generation of lepton asymmetry that may survive in the pla…
We consider relatively heavy neutrinos $ν_H$, mostly contributing to a sterile state $ν_s$, with mass in the range 10 MeV $\lesssim m_s \lesssim m_π \sim 135$ MeV, which are thermally produced in the early universe in collisional processes involving active neutrinos, and freezing out after the QCD phase transition. If these neutrinos decay after the active neutrino decoupling, they generate extra neutrino radiation, but also contribute to entropy production. Thus, they alter the value of the effective number of neutrino species $N_{\rm eff}$ as for instance measured by the cosmic microwave bac…
We study a new class of signals where fermionic dark matter is absorbed by bound electron targets. Fermionic absorption signals in direct detection and neutrino experiments are sensitive to dark matter with sub-MeV mass, probing a region of parameter space in which dark matter is otherwise challenging to detect. We calculate the rate and energy deposition spectrum in xenon-based detectors, making projections for current and future experiments. We present two possible models that display fermionic absorption by electrons and study the detection prospects in light of other constraints.
String/ M-theory compactifications predict the existence of a modulus field with a mass of 100-10000 TeV. Its decay at MeV-temperatures generates large amounts of entropy and washes out any previously produced baryon asymmetry. We describe how the baryon asymmetry can be (re)generated by the modulus decay. The mechanism relates the smallness of the asymmetry to the hierarchy between the Planck- and the Fermi-scale.
In the standard model neutrinos are assumed to have streamed across the Universe since they last scattered at the weak decoupling epoch when the temperature of the standard-model plasma was ~MeV. The shear stress of free-streaming neutrinos imprints itself gravitationally on the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) and makes the CMB a sensitive probe of neutrino scattering. Yet, the presence of nonstandard physics in the neutrino sector may alter this standard chronology and delay neutrino free-streaming until a much later epoch. We use observations of the CMB to constrain the strength of neutrin…
We investigate in detail the leptogenesis by the decay of coherent right-handed sneutrino $\widetilde{N}$ having dominated the energy density of the early universe, which was originally proposed by HM and TY. Once the $\widetilde{N}$ dominant universe is realized, the amount of the generated lepton asymmetry (and hence baryon asymmetry) is determined only by the properties of the right-handed neutrino, regardless of the history before it dominates the universe. Moreover, thanks to the entropy production by the decay of the right-handed sneutrino, thermally produced relics are sufficiently dilu…
We discuss how a laboratory detection of a sterile neutrino not only would constitute a fundamental discovery of a new particle, but could also provide an indication of the evolution of the Universe before Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN), a fundamental discovery in cosmology. These "visible" sterile neutrinos could be detected in experiments such as KATRIN/TRISTAN and HUNTER in the keV mass range and PTOLEMY, KATRIN and reactor neutrino experiments in the eV mass range. Standard assumptions are usually made to compute the relic abundance and momentum distribution of particles produced before th…
Axions with mass greater than 0.7 eV are excluded by cosmological precision data because they provide too much hot dark matter. While for masses above 20 eV the axion lifetime drops below the age of the universe, we show that the cosmological exclusion range can be extended from 0.7 eV till 300 keV, primarily by the cosmic deuterium abundance: axion decays would strongly modify the baryon-to-photon ratio at BBN relative to the one at CMB decoupling. Additional arguments include neutrino dilution relative to photons by axion decays and spectral CMB distortions. Our new cosmological constraints …
We propose a novel framework where light (sub-GeV) dark matter (DM) is detectable with future MeV gamma-ray telescopes without conflicting with Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) data. The stable DM particle $χ$ has a very low thermal relic abundance due to its large pair-annihilation cross section. The DM number density is stored in a heavier, meta-stable partner $ψ$ with suppressed pair-annihilation rates, that does not perturb the CMB, and whose late-time decays $ψ\rightarrow χ$ fill the universe with $χ$ DM particles. We provide explicit, model-independent realizations for this framework, a…
We investigate how sterile neutrinos with a range of masses influence cosmology in MeV-scale reheating temperature scenarios. By computing the production of sterile neutrinos through the combination of mixing and scattering in the early Universe, we find that light sterile neutrinos, with masses and mixings as inferred from short-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments, are consistent with big-bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) and cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation for the reheating temperature of ${\cal O}(1)$ MeV if the parent particle responsible for reheating decays into electromagneti…
Visible matter in the current Universe is a consequence of the phase transition of the strong force, quantum chromodynamics (QCD). This phase transition has occurred at the Universe temperature around $T_c\simeq 165\,$MeV while it was expanding. Strongly interacting matter particles are quarks above $T_c$, while they are pions, protons and neutrons below $T_c$. The spin degrees of freedom 37 in the quark and gluon phase just above $T_c$ are converted to 3 (pions) after the phase transition. This phase transition might have been achieved mostly at supercooled temperatures. The supercooling was …
Meta-stable dark sector particles decaying into electrons or photons may non-trivially change the Hubble rate, lead to entropy injection into the thermal bath of Standard Model particles and may also photodisintegrate light nuclei formed in the early universe. We study generic constraints from Big Bang Nucleosynthesis on such a setup, with a particular emphasis on MeV-scale particles which are neither fully relativistic nor non-relativistic during all times relevant for Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. We apply our results to a simple model of self-interacting dark matter with a light scalar mediator…
We compute the mass function of bound states of Asymmetric Dark Matter--nuggets--synthesized in the early Universe. We apply our results for the nugget density and binding energy computed from a nuclear model to obtain analytic estimates of the typical nugget size exiting synthesis. We numerically solve the Boltzmann equation for synthesis including two-to-two fusion reactions, estimating the impact of bottlenecks on the mass function exiting synthesis. These results provide the basis for studying the late Universe cosmology of nuggets in a future companion paper.
If dark matter (DM) particles are lighter than a few MeV/$c^2$ and can scatter off electrons, their interaction within the solar interior results in a considerable hardening of the spectrum of galactic dark matter received on Earth. For a large range of the mass vs. cross section parameter space, $\{m_e, σ_e\}$, the "reflected" component of the DM flux is far more energetic than the endpoint of the ambient galactic DM energy distribution, making it detectable with existing DM detectors sensitive to an energy deposition of $10-10^3$ eV. After numerically simulating the small reflected component…
We consider the cosmological effects of sterile neutrinos with the masses of $150- 450$ MeV. The decay of sterile neutrinos changes the thermal history of the Universe and affects the energy density of radiation at the recombination and the big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) results. We derive severe constraints on the parameters of sterile neutrinos from the primordial abundances of helium-4 and deuterium. We also find that in a particular model the constraints can be considerably relaxed by assuming a large lepton asymmetry in the active neutrinos. In this case, the consistent parameters result …
Muon abundance is required for the understanding of several fundamental questions regarding properties of the primordial Universe. In this paper we evaluate the production and decay rates of muons in the cosmic plasma as a function of temperature. This allows us to determine when exactly the muon abundance disappears. When the Universe cools below the temperature $kT_\mathrm{disappear}\approx 4.135$ MeV the muon decay rate overwhelms production rates and muons vanish quasi-instantaneously from the Universe. Interestingly, we show that at $T_\mathrm{disappear}$ the muon number is nearly equal t…
We present a scenario in which a remarkably simple relation linking dark matter properties and neutrino masses naturally emerges. This framework points towards a low energy theory where the neutrino mass originates from the existence of a light scalar dark matter particle in the MeV mass range. A very surprising aspect of this scenario is that the required MeV dark matter is one of the favoured candidates to explain the mysterious emission of 511 keV photons in the centre of our galaxy. A possible interpretation of these findings is that dark matter is the stepping stone of a theory beyond the…
We study the possibility that the dilaton plays the role of the dark matter of the universe. We find that the condition for the dilaton to be the dark matter of the universe strongly restricts its mass to be around 0.5 keV or 270 MeV. For the other mass ranges, the dilaton either undercloses or overcloses the universe. The 0.5 keV dilaton has the free-streaming distance of about 1.4 Mpc and becomes an excellent candidate of a warm dark matter, while the 270 MeV one has the free-streaming distance of about 7.4 pc and becomes a cold dark matter. We discuss the possible ways to detect the dilaton…
We present a possible explanation of the recently observed 511 keV $γ$-ray anomaly with a new ``millicharged'' fermion. The new fermion is light (${\cal O}({\rm MeV})$) but has never been observed by any collider experiments mainly because of its tiny electromagnetic charge $εe$. We show that constraints from its relic density in the Universe and collider experiments allow a parameter range such that the 511 keV cosmic $γ$-ray emission from the galactic bulge may be due to positron production from this millicharged fermion.
We study models in which the universe exits reheating at temperatures in the MeV regime. By combining light element abundance measurements with cosmic microwave background and large scale structure data we find a fairly robust lower limit on the reheating temperature of T_RH > 4 MeV at 95% C.L. However, if the heavy particle whose decay reheats the universe has a direct decay mode to neutrinos, there are some small islands left in parameter space where a reheating temperature as low as 1 MeV is allowed. The derived lower bound on the reheating temperature also leads to very stringent bounds on…
New light states thermally coupled to the Standard Model plasma alter the expansion history of the Universe and impact the synthesis of the primordial light elements. In this work, we carry out an exhaustive and precise analysis of the implications of MeV-scale BSM particles in Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) and for Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) observations. We find that, BBN observations set a lower bound on the thermal dark matter mass of $m_χ> 0.4\,\text{MeV}$ at $2σ$. This bound is independent of the spin and number of internal degrees of freedom of the particle, of the annihilation b…
Light dark matter is a compelling experimental target in light of stringent constraints on heavier WIMPs. However, for a sub-MeV WIMP, the universe is sufficiently well understood at temperatures below 10 MeV that there is no room for it to be a thermal relic. Avoiding thermalization is itself a strong constraint with significant implications for direct detection. In this paper, we explore the space of models of sub-MeV dark matter with viable cosmologies. The parameter space of these models that is also consistent with astrophysical and lab-based limits is highly restricted for couplings to e…
If the neutrino is Majorana type and the electroweak phase transition is second or weak first order, neutrino-induced interactions together with sphaleron transitions have the potential to erase a previously generated baryon asymmetry of the universe. Taking correctly into account the evolution of the vacuum expectation of the Higgs field the effective light neutrino masses are constrained to be lighter than order 10 MeV, while the effective heavy masses are constrained to be heavier than order 10^7 GeV.
A quark-gluon phase transition in the Universe is researched after which vacuum (dark) energy has hardened and become cosmological constant. Before this a vacuum component of the Universe was changing by jumps during phase transitions since vacuum condensates of quantum fields carried a negative contribution in its positive density energy. This quintessence period of the Universe life took place during the first parts of a second when our Universe was losing high symmetry. Using Zel'dovich's formula the modern value of vacuum energy is also calculated. It is shown that a quantum chromodynamica…
The Universe is filled with a diffuse background of MeV gamma-rays and PeV neutrinos, whose origins are unknown. Here, we propose a scenario that can account for both backgrounds simultaneously. Low-luminosity active galactic nuclei have hot accretion flows where thermal electrons naturally emit soft gamma rays via Comptonization of their synchrotron photons. Protons there can be accelerated via turbulence or reconnection, producing high-energy neutrinos via hadronic interactions. We demonstrate that our model can reproduce the gamma-ray and neutrino data. Combined with a contribution by hot c…
The existence of dark matter is now well established by several indirect experiments. Several candidates for dark matter has also been proposed. However, the dark matter can just be like our ordinary matter in a parallel Universe with both Universes being described by their own non-abelian gauge symmetries forbidding any kinetic mixing. However, the quartic Higgs interactions involving Higgs fields between the two Universes are allowed by the symmetries of the model. The ensuing mixing between the two lightest Standard Model like Higgses gives rise to interesting signatures at the proposed int…
We study the $ν_μ$ and $ν_τ$ decays in the early epoch of the universe. If $m_{ν_τ}>2m_e$, there would be a CP asymmetry between $ν_τ\rightarrow e^++e^-+ν_e$ and $\barν_τ \rightarrow e^++e^-+\barν_e$. The resultant CP non-invariance is a function of temperature and density and can reach $10^{-7}$ for a reasonable temperature range, but it is noticed that if $m_{ν_τ}>2m_μ\sim 200$ MeV, the CP non-invariance can be much larger.
Primordial black holes (PBHs), formed out of large overdensities in the early Universe, are a viable dark matter (DM) candidate over a broad range of masses. Ultra-light, asteroid-mass PBHs with masses around $10^{17}$ g are particularly interesting as current observations allow them to constitute the entire DM density. PBHs in this mass range emit $\sim$ MeV photons via Hawking radiation which can directly be detected by the gamma ray telescopes, such as the upcoming AMEGO. In this work we forecast how well an instrument with the sensitivity of AMEGO will be able to detect, or rule out, PBHs …
Since the thermal history of the Universe is unknown before the epoch of primordial nucleosynthesis, the largest temperature of the radiation dominated phase (the reheating temperature) might have been as low as 1 MeV. We perform a quantitative study of supersymmetric dark matter relic abundance in cosmological scenarios with low reheating temperature. We show that, for values of the reheating temperature smaller than about 30 GeV, the domains of the supergravity parameter space which are compatible with the hypothesis that dark matter is composed by neutralinos are largely enhanced. We also f…
The domain wall problem of the Peccei-Quinn mechanism can be solved if the Peccei-Quinn symmetry is explicitly broken by a small amount. Domain walls decay into axions, which may account for dark matter of the universe. This scheme is however strongly constrained by overproduction of axions unless the phase of the explicit breaking term is tuned. We investigate the case where the universe is matter-dominated around the temperature of the MeV scale and domain walls decay during this matter dominated epoch. We show how the viable parameter space is expanded.
We study the type-I seesaw model with three right-handed neutrinos and Majorana masses below the pion mass. In this mass range, the model parameter space is not only strongly constrained by the requirement to explain the light neutrino masses, but also by experimental searches and cosmological considerations. In the existing literature, three disjoint regions of potentially viable parameter space have been identified. In one of them, all heavy neutrinos decay shortly before big bang nucleosynthesis. In the other two regions, one of the heavy neutrinos either decays between BBN and the CMB deco…
About $26\%$ of the matter in our Universe is made up of Dark Matter (DM), which interacts with Standard Model (SM) matter only through gravitational or weak interactions. Many proposals have been made by scientists about the possible candidates of DM - WIMPs, axions, ALPs, black holes etc. And range of its mass could be extremely broad - from Planck scale to as light as $10^{-22}$ eV. Experiments to detect DM are extremely challenging, as DM does not exhibit appreciable interactions with ordinary matter. May be due to such elusive nature, so far it has not been possible to detect DM, though m…
We consider the Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) bounds on light dark matter whose cross section off nucleons is sufficiently large to enable acceleration by scattering off of cosmic rays in the local galaxy. Such accelerated DM could then deposit energy in terrestrial detectors. Since this signal involves DM of mass ~ keV - 100 MeV and requires large cross sections > 10^-31 cm^2 in a relativistic kinematic regime, we find that the DM population in this scenario is generically equilibrated with Standard Model particles in the early universe. For sufficiently low DM masses < 10 MeV, corresponding…
If a bosonic partner of a right-handed neutrino dominates the early universe sufficiently before its decay, important ingredients in the present universe are related to physics of the right-handed neutrino sector. In particular, we find that the ratio of the baryon to the dark-matter densities is given only by low-energy parameters such as a neutrino mass and a gravitino mass if the reheating temperature of inflation is much higher than $10^{12}$ GeV. Here, the gravitino is assumed to be the lightest supersymmetric particle and the dominant component of the dark matter. The observed ratio, $Ω_…
We present the first cosmological constraint on dark matter scattering with protons in the early Universe for the entire range of dark matter masses between 1 keV and 1 TeV. This constraint is derived from the Planck measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature and polarization anisotropy, and the CMB lensing anisotropy. It improves upon previous CMB constraints by many orders of magnitude, where limits are available, and closes the gap in coverage for low-mass dark matter candidates. We focus on two canonical interaction scenarios: spin-independent and spin-dependent scat…
Mirror matter is a promising self-collisional dark matter candidate. Here we study the evolution of thermodynamical quantities in the early Universe for temperatures below ~100 MeV in presence of a hidden mirror sector with unbroken parity symmetry and with gravitational interactions only. This range of temperatures is interesting for primordial nucleosynthesis analyses, therefore we focus on the temporal evolution of number of degrees of freedom in both sectors. Numerically solving the equations, we obtain the interesting prediction that the effective number of extra-neutrino families raises …
We study the possibility that the dilaton -- the fundamental scalar field which exists in all the existing unified field theories -- plays the role of the dark matter of the universe. We find that the condition for the dilaton to be the dark matter strongly restricts its mass to be around 0.5 keV or 270 MeV. For the other mass ranges, the dilaton either undercloses or overcloses the universe. The 0.5 keV dilaton has the free-streaming distance of about 1.4 Mpc and becomes an excellent candidate of a warm dark matter, while the 270 MeV one has the free-streaming distance of about 7.4 pc and bec…
Over the past few decades, a consensus picture has emerged in which roughly a quarter of the universe consists of dark matter. I begin with a review of the observational evidence for the existence of dark matter: rotation curves of galaxies, gravitational lensing measurements, hot gas in clusters, galaxy formation, primordial nucleosynthesis and cosmic microwave background observations. Then I discuss a number of anomalous signals in a variety of data sets that may point to discovery, though all of them are controversial. The annual modulation in the DAMA detector and/or the gamma-ray excess s…
The lack of information before Big Bang Neucleosynthesis (BBN) allow us to assume the presence of a new species $ϕ$ whose energy density redshifts as $a^{-(4+n)}$ where $n>0$ and $a$ is the scale factor. This non-standard cosmological setup facilitates a larger portal coupling $(ε)$ between the dark and the visible sectors even when the two sectors are not in thermal equilibrium. Here, we have considered $U(1)_{L_μ-L_τ}\otimes U(1)_X$ gauge extension of the Standard Model (SM) and studied different phases of the cosmological evolution of a thermally decoupled dark sector such as leak-in, freez…
We combine complementary datasets to constrain dark energy. Using standard Big Bang Nucleosynthesis and the observed abundances of primordial nuclides to put constraints on $Ω_Q$ at temperatures near $T \sim 1MeV$, we find the strong constraint $Ω_Q({MeV}) < 0.045$ at $2σ$ c.l.. Under the assumption of flatness, using results from Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropy measurements, high redshift supernovae (SN-Ia) observations and data from local cluster abundances we put a new constraint on the equation of state parameter $w_Q < -0.85$ at 68% c.l..
Physics is facing contingency. Not only in facts but also in laws (the frontier becoming extremely narrow). Cosmic natural selection is a tantalizing idea to explain the apparently highly improbable structure of our Universe. In this brief note I will study the creation of Universes by black holes in -string inspired- higher order curvature gravity.
A large lepton asymmetry could be generated in the Early Universe by oscillations of active to sterile neutrinos with a small mixing angle sin 2 θ< 10^-2. The final order of magnitude of the lepton asymmetry ηis mainly determined by its growth in the last stage of evolution when the MSW resonance dominates the kinetic equations. In this paper we present a simple way of calculating the maximum possible lepton asymmetry which can be created. Our results are in good agreement to previous calculations. Furthermore, we find that the growth of asymmetry does not obey any particular power law. We fin…
We study the production of sterile neutrinos in supernovae, focusing in particular on the keV--MeV mass range, which is the most interesting range if sterile neutrinos are to account for the dark matter in the Universe. Focusing on the simplest scenario in which sterile neutrinos mixes only with muon or tau neutrino, we argue that the production of keV--MeV sterile neutrinos can be strongly enhanced by a Mikheyev--Smirnov--Wolfenstein (MSW) resonance, so that a substantial flux is expected to emerge from a supernova, even if vacuum mixing angles between active and sterile neutrinos are tiny. U…
We discuss a possible scale of gravitational origin at around $10$ MeV, or $10^{-12}$ cm, which arises in the MacDowell-Mansouri formalism of gravity due to the topological Gauss-Bonnet term in the action, as pointed out by Bjorken several years ago. A length scale of the same size emerges also in the Kodama solution in gravity, which is known to be closely related to the MacDowell-Mansouri formulation. We particularly draw attention to the intriguing incident that existence of six compact extra dimensions originated from TeV-scale quantum gravity as well points to a length scale of $10^{-12}$…
