Wuppertal 2015 – scientific programme

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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik

T 58: Jenseits des Standardmodells 2 (Theorie)

T 58.1: Talk

Tuesday, March 10, 2015, 16:45–17:00, K.11.20 (K5)

Scrutinising Sterile Neutrino Dark Matter Production from Scalar Decays — Alexander Merle and •Maximilian Totzauer — Max-Planck-Institut für Physik (Heisenberg-Institut), Föhringer Ring 6, 80805 München

We investigate in detail the production of sterile neutrino dark matter from the decay of a scalar singlet to which the sterile neutrinos couple via a Yukawa-type interaction. The scalar couples to the Standard Model via a Higgs portal, the size of which determines whether or not the scalar singlet enters thermal equilibrium in the early Universe. If both couplings are chosen adequately, the mechanism can produce the correct observed relic abundance. While previous studies restricted themselves to limiting cases where the abundance and the momentum distribution are approximately accessible with analytic approaches, we present a fully numerical computation in order to cover the whole parameter space of the model. This allows us to gain deeper insight into the assumptions and simplifications usually made in the literature and it moreover yields refined results for the momentum distribution function of the sterile neutrino, which is the vital input quantity for the formation of large-scale structure in the Universe. In particular we show that the momentum distribution function can differ significantly from the analytical estimates present in the literature, which opens a wide range of possibilities for addressing the small scale problems in structure formation.