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Franca, U., Lineros, R. A., Palacio, J., & Pastor, S. (2013). Probing interactions within the dark matter sector via extra radiation contributions. Phys. Rev. D, 87(12), 123521–6pp.
Abstract: The nature of dark matter is one of the most thrilling riddles for both cosmology and particle physics nowadays. While in the typical models the dark sector is composed only by weakly interacting massive particles, an arguably more natural scenario would include a whole set of gauge interactions which are invisible for the standard model but that are in contact with the dark matter. We present a method to constrain the number of massless gauge bosons and other relativistic particles that might be present in the dark sector using current and future cosmic microwave background data, and provide upper bounds on the size of the dark sector. We use the fact that the dark matter abundance depends on the strength of the interactions with both sectors, which allows one to relate the freeze-out temperature of the dark matter with the temperature of this cosmic background of dark gauge bosons. This relation can then be used to calculate how sizable is the impact of the relativistic dark sector in the number of degrees of freedom of the early Universe, providing an interesting and testable connection between cosmological data and direct/indirect detection experiments. The recent Planck data, in combination with other cosmic microwave background experiments and baryonic acoustic oscillations data, constrains the number of relativistic dark gauge bosons, when the freeze-out temperature of the dark matter is larger than the top mass, to be N less than or similar to 14 for the simplest scenarios, while those limits are slightly relaxed for the combination with the Hubble constant measurements to N less than or similar to 20. Future releases of Planck data are expected to reduce the uncertainty by approximately a factor of 3, which will reduce significantly the parameter space of allowed models.
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Adhikari, R. et al, Pastor, S., & Valle, J. W. F. (2017). A White Paper on keV sterile neutrino Dark Matter. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 01(1), 025–247pp.
Abstract: We present a comprehensive review of keV-scale sterile neutrino Dark Matter, collecting views and insights from all disciplines involved – cosmology, astrophysics, nuclear, and particle physics – in each case viewed from both theoretical and experimental/observational perspectives. After reviewing the role of active neutrinos in particle physics, astrophysics, and cosmology, we focus on sterile neutrinos in the context of the Dark Matter puzzle. Here, we first review the physics motivation for sterile neutrino Dark Matter, based on challenges and tensions in purely cold Dark Matter scenarios. We then round out the discussion by critically summarizing all known constraints on sterile neutrino Dark Matter arising from astrophysical observations, laboratory experiments, and theoretical considerations. In this context, we provide a balanced discourse on the possibly positive signal from X-ray observations. Another focus of the paper concerns the construction of particle physics models, aiming to explain how sterile neutrinos of keV-scale masses could arise in concrete settings beyond the Standard Model of elementary particle physics. The paper ends with an extensive review of current and future astrophysical and laboratory searches, highlighting new ideas and their experimental challenges, as well as future perspectives for the discovery of sterile neutrinos.
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de Salas, P. F., Gariazzo, S., Martinez-Mirave, P., Pastor, S., & Tortola, M. (2021). Cosmological radiation density with non-standard neutrino-electron interactions. Phys. Lett. B, 820, 136508–9pp.
Abstract: Neutrino non-standard interactions (NSI) with electrons are known to alter the picture of neutrino de coupling from the cosmic plasma. NSI modify both flavour oscillations through matter effects, and the annihilation and scattering between neutrinos and electrons and positrons in the thermal plasma. In view of the forthcoming cosmological observations, we perform a precision study of the impact of non universal and flavour-changing NSI on the effective number of neutrinos, Neff. We present the variation of Neff arising from the different NSI parameters and discuss the existing degeneracies among them, from cosmology alone and in relation to the current bounds from terrestrial experiments. Even though cosmology is generally less sensitive to NSI than these experiments, we find that future cosmological data would provide competitive and complementary constraints for some of the couplings and their combinations.
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de Salas, P. F., & Pastor, S. (2016). Relic neutrino decoupling with flavour oscillations revisited. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 07(7), 051–18pp.
Abstract: We study the decoupling process of neutrinos in the early universe in the presence of three-flavour oscillations. The evolution of the neutrino spectra is found by solving the corresponding momentum-dependent kinetic equations for the neutrino density matrix, including for the first time the proper collision integrals for both diagonal and off-diagonal elements. This improved calculation modifies the evolution of the off-diagonal elements of the neutrino density matrix and changes the deviation from equilibrium of the frozen neutrino spectra. However, it does not vary the contribution of neutrinos to the cosmological energy density in the form of radiation, usually expressed in terms of the effective number of neutrinos, N-eff. We find a value of N-eff = 3.045, in agreement with previous theoretical calculations and consistent with the latest analysis of Planck data. This result does not depend on the ordering of neutrino masses. We also consider the effect of non-standard neutrino-electron interactions (NSI), predicted in many theoretical models where neutrinos acquire mass. For two sets of NSI parameters allowed by present data, we find that Neff can be reduced down to 3.040 or enhanced up to 3.059.
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de Salas, P. F., Lattanzi, M., Mangano, G., Miele, G., Pastor, S., & Pisanti, O. (2015). Bounds on very low reheating scenarios after Planck. Phys. Rev. D, 92(12), 123534–9pp.
Abstract: We consider the case of very low reheating scenarios [T-RH similar to O(MeV)] with a better calculation of the production of the relic neutrino background (with three-flavor oscillations). At 95% confidence level, a lower bound on the reheating temperature T-RH > 4.1 MeV is obtained from big bang nucleosynthesis, while T-RH > 4.7 MeV from Planck data (allowing neutrino masses to vary), the most stringent bound on the reheating temperature to date. Neutrino masses as large as 1 eV are possible for very low reheating temperatures.
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de Salas, P. F., Pastor, S., Ternes, C. A., Thakore, T., & Tortola, M. (2019). Constraining the invisible neutrino decay with KM3NeT-ORCA. Phys. Lett. B, 789, 472–479.
Abstract: Several theories of particle physics beyond the Standard Model consider that neutrinos can decay. In this work we assume that the standard mechanism of neutrino oscillations is altered by the decay of the heaviest neutrino mass state into a sterile neutrino and, depending on the model, a scalar or a Majoron. We study the sensitivity of the forthcoming KM3NeT-ORCA experiment to this scenario and find that it could improve the current bounds coming from oscillation experiments, where three-neutrino oscillations have been considered, by roughly two orders of magnitude. We also study how the presence of this neutrino decay can affect the determination of the atmospheric oscillation parameters sin(2) theta(23) and Delta m(31)(2), as well as the sensitivity to the neutrino mass ordering.
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de Salas, P. F., Gariazzo, S., Lesgourgues, J., & Pastor, S. (2017). Calculation of the local density of relic neutrinos. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 09(9), 034–24pp.
Abstract: Nonzero neutrino masses are required by the existence of flavour oscillations, with values of the order of at least 50 meV. We consider the gravitational clustering of relic neutrinos within the Milky Way, and used the N – one-body simulation technique to compute their density enhancement factor in the neighbourhood of the Earth with respect to the average cosmic density. Compared to previous similar studies, we pushed the simulation down to smaller neutrino masses, and included an improved treatment of the baryonic and dark matter distributions in the Milky Way. Our results are important for future experiments aiming at detecting the cosmic neutrino background, such as the Princeton Tritium Observatory for Light, Early-universe, Massive-neutrino Yield (PTOLEMY) proposal. We calculate the impact of neutrino clustering in the Milky Way on the expected event rate for a PTOLEMY-like experiment. We find that the effect of clustering remains negligible for the minimal normal hierarchy scenario, while it enhances the event rate by 10 to 20% (resp. a factor 1.7 to 2.5) for the minimal inverted hierarchy scenario (resp. a degenerate scenario with 150 meV masses). Finally we compute the impact on the event rate of a possible fourth sterile neutrino with a mass of 1.3 eV.
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de Salas, P. F., Gariazzo, S., Laveder, M., Pastor, S., Pisanti, O., & Truong, N. (2018). Cosmological bounds on neutrino statistics. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 03(3), 050–18pp.
Abstract: We consider the phenomenological implications of the violation of the Pauli exclusion principle for neutrinos, focusing on cosmological observables such as the spectrum of Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropies, Baryon Acoustic Oscillations and the primordial abundances of light elements. Neutrinos that behave (at least partly) as bosonic particles have a modified equilibrium distribution function that implies a different influence on the evolution of the Universe that, in the case of massive neutrinos, can not be simply parametrized by a change in the effective number of neutrinos. Our results show that, despite the precision of the available cosmological data, only very weak bounds can be obtained on neutrino statistics, disfavouring a more bosonic behaviour at less than 2 sigma.
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Consiglio, R., de Salas, P. F., Mangano, G., Miele, G., Pastor, S., & Pisanti, O. (2018). PArthENoPE reloaded. Comput. Phys. Commun., 233, 237–242.
Abstract: We describe the main features of a new and updated version of the program PArthENoPE, which computes the abundances of light elements produced during Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. As the previous first release in 2008, the new one, PArthENoPE2.0, is publicly available and distributed from the code site, http://parthenope.na.infn.it . Apart from minor changes, which will be also detailed, the main improvements are as follows. The powerful, but not freely accessible, NAG routines have been substituted by ODEPACK libraries, without any significant loss in precision. Moreover, we have developed a Graphical User Interface (GUI) which allows a friendly use of the code and a simpler implementation of running for grids of input parameters. New Version program summary Program Title: PArthENoPE2.0 Program Files doi : http://dx.doi.org/10.17632/wvgr7d8yt9.1 Licensing provisions: GPLv3 Programming language: Fortran 77 and Python Supplementary material: User Manual available on the web page http://parthenope.na.infn.it Journal reference of previous version: Comput. Phys. Commun. 178 (2008) 956 971 Does the new version supersede the previous version?: Yes Reasons for the new version: Make the code more versatile and user friendly Summary of revisions: (1) Publicly available libraries (2) GUI for configuration Nature of problem: Computation of yields of light elements synthesized in the primordial universe Solution method: Livermore Solver for Ordinary Differential Equations (LSODE) for stiff and nonstiff systems
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Castorina, E., Franca, U., Lattanzi, M., Lesgourgues, J., Mangano, G., Melchiorri, A., et al. (2012). Cosmological lepton asymmetry with a nonzero mixing angle theta(13). Phys. Rev. D, 86(2), 023517–11pp.
Abstract: While the baryon asymmetry of the Universe is nowadays well measured by cosmological observations, the bounds on the lepton asymmetry in the form of neutrinos are still significantly weaker. We place limits on the relic neutrino asymmetries using some of the latest cosmological data, taking into account the effect of flavor oscillations. We present our results for two different values of the neutrino mixing angle theta(13), and show that for large theta(13) the limits on the total neutrino asymmetry become more stringent, diluting even large initial flavor asymmetries. In particular, we find that the present bounds are still dominated by the limits coming from big bang nucleosynthesis, while the limits on the total neutrino mass from cosmological data are essentially independent of theta(13). Finally, we perform a forecast for Cosmic Origins Explorer, taken as an example of a future cosmic microwave background experiment, and find that it could improve the limits on the total lepton asymmetry approximately by up to a factor 6.6.
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