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Constraining the window on sterile neutrinos as warm dark matter |
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| Authors: | Steen H Hansen Julien Lesgourgues Sergio Pastor Joseph Silk |
| Institution: | Department of Physics, Nuclear &Astrophysics Laboratory, University of Oxford, Keble Road, Oxford OX1 3RH,; Laboratoire de Physique Théorique LAPTH, BP 110, F-74941, Annecy-le-Vieux Cedex, France and; Max-Planck-Institut für Physik (Werner-Heisenberg-Institut), Föhringer Ring 6, D-80805, Munich, Germany |
| Abstract: | Sterile neutrinos may be one of the best warm dark matter candidates we have today. Both lower and upper bounds on the mass of the sterile neutrino come from astronomical observations. We show that the proper inclusion of the neutrino momentum distribution reduces the allowed region to be 2.6 keV< m <5 keV for the simplest models. A search for a spectral line with E = m /2 is thus more interesting than ever before. |
| Keywords: | dark matter early Universe large-scale structure of Universe |