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Probing secret interactions of eV-scale sterile neutrinos with the diffuse supernova neutrino background
Preprint   Open access

Probing secret interactions of eV-scale sterile neutrinos with the diffuse supernova neutrino background

Mary Hall Reno, Yu Seon Jeong, Sergio Palomares-Ruiz and Ina Sarcevic
arXiv.org
Cornell University Library, arXiv.org
12/10/2020
DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.1803.04541
url
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1803.04541View
Preprint (Author's original)This preprint has not been evaluated by subject experts through peer review. Preprints may undergo extensive changes and/or become peer-reviewed journal articles. Open Access

Abstract

While three flavors of "active" neutrinos are consistent with mixing angle results within error bars, there are anomalies may be hints of physics beyond the standard model that can accommodate a fourth mostly "sterile" neutrino species with an eV-scale mass and a mixing angle with active neutrinos of order \(\theta_0\simeq 0.1\). We describe a scenario with eV-scale sterile neutrinos that have self-interactions via a new gauge vector boson, a "secret" mediator \(\phi\). We show that their production in the early Universe via mixing with active neutrinos is consistent with Big Bang Nucleosynthesis and free-streaming constraints in the Cosmic Microwave Background epoch. For \(M_\phi=4-8\) keV and sterile neutrino coupling \(g_s=10^{-4}\), we find that resonant interactions of diffuse supernova neutrinos with relic sterile neutrinos in transit to the Earth would cause spectral dips in the neutrino flux. We illustrate the corresponding (anti-)neutrino event distributions as a function of energy in the DUNE (Hyper-Kamiokande) detector.
Cosmology Anomalies Astronomical models Big bang cosmology Big Bang theory Cosmic microwave background Flavor (particle physics) Neutrinos Nuclear fusion Nuclei (nuclear physics) Resonant interactions

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