English

Connecting cosmologically decaying dark matter to neutrino physics

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2025-09-25 v1 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics

Abstract

Dark matter decays into invisible particles can leave an imprint in large-scale structure surveys due to a characteristic redshift-dependent suppression of the power spectrum. We present a model with two quasi-degenerate singlet fermions, χ1\chi_1 and χ2\chi_2, in which the heavier state decays as χ2χˉ1νν\chi_2 \to \bar \chi_1 \nu \nu on cosmological time-scales, and that also accommodates non-zero neutrino masses. Remarkably, for parameters that yield the correct dark matter abundance via freeze-in and reproduce the observed neutrino masses, dark matter decay can produce detectable signals in forthcoming large-scale structure surveys, a diffuse anti-neutrino flux accessible to JUNO, and a gamma-ray line within the energy range probed by COSI. Both the cosmological lifetime of χ2\chi_2 as well as the small (radiatively induced) mass splitting among χ1,2\chi_{1,2} are a natural consequence of the mechanism of neutrino mass generation within this model. This highlights the potential role of large-scale structure surveys in probing some classes of neutrino mass models.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2509.19596,
  title  = {Connecting cosmologically decaying dark matter to neutrino physics},
  author = {Lea Fuß and Mathias Garny and Alejandro Ibarra},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.19596},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

15+10 pages, 9 figures, 2 tables