Related papers: Light WIMPs And Equivalent Neutrinos
Recent updates to the observational determinations of the primordial abundances of helium and deuterium are compared to the predictions of BBN to infer the universal ratio of baryons to photons (or, the present Universe baryon mass density…
(abridged) In the presence of a light WIMP (mass m_chi < 30 MeV), there are degeneracies among the WIMP's nature, its couplings to standard model particles, its mass, and the number of equivalent (additional) neutrinos, Delta N_nu. These…
(Abridged) In the presence of a light WIMP (< 30 MeV), there are degeneracies among the nature of the WIMP, its couplings to standard model particles, its mass m_chi, and the number of equivalent neutrinos beyond the standard model, Delta…
According to conventional wisdom, in the standard model (SM) of particle physics and cosmology the effective number of neutrinos is Neff=3 (more precisely, 3.046). In extensions of the standard model allowing for the presence of DeltaNnu…
The possibility that the so-called "lithium problem", i.e. the disagreement between the theoretical abundance predicted for primordial $^7$Li assuming standard nucleosynthesis and the value inferred from astrophysical measurements, can be…
Short baseline neutrino experiments such as LSND and MiniBooNE seem to suggest the existence of light sterile neutrinos. Meanwhile, current cosmic microwave background (CMB) and big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) measurements place an upper…
The Weakly Interacting Massive Particles(WIMPs) have long been the favored CDM candidate in the standard $\Lambda$CDM model. However, owing to great improvement in the experimental sensitivity in the past decade, some parameter space of the…
Big-bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) probes the cosmic mass-energy density at temperatures $\sim 10$ MeV to $\sim 100$ keV. Here, we consider the effect of a cosmic matter-like species that is non-relativistic and pressureless during BBN. Such a…
Recent cosmic microwave background (CMB) results from BOOMERANG, MAXIMA, and DASI provide cosmological constraints on new physics that can be competitive with those derived from Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN). In particular, both CMB and…
We present calculations showing that upcoming Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) experiments will have the power to improve on current constraints on neutrino masses and provide new limits on neutrino degeneracy parameters. The latter could…
The heavy gravitinos in minimal supergravity (mSUGRA) models couple gravitionally and can naturally be the Superweakly Interacting Massive Particle (SuperWIMP). As plausible candidates for the cold dark matter in the universe, such…
A thermal relic, often referred to as a weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP), is a particle produced during the early evolution of the Universe whose present (relic) abundance depends only on its mass and its thermally averaged…
Simple models of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) predict dark matter annihilations into pairs of electroweak gauge bosons, Higgses or tops, which through their subsequent cascade decays produce a spectrum of gamma rays.…
We present a comprehensive study of secluded dark matter (DM) $\chi$, where the relic abundance is set by annihilations into lighter dark mediators $\phi$ that couple only feebly to the Standard Model (SM). In contrast to canonical WIMPs,…
In the light of the recent WMAP results we update the constraints on a class of non standard BBN models with a simultaneous combination of non standard neutrino distributions and extra effective number of neutrinos in the expansion rate.…
We propose a novel probe of weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) dark matter (DM) candidates of a wide mass range which fall short of the required annihilation rates to satisfy correct thermal relic abundance, dubbed as…
A light ($m_{\nu d} \lesssim $ MeV) dark fermion mixing with the Standard Model neutrinos can naturally equilibrate with the neutrinos via oscillations and scattering. In the presence of dark sector interactions, production of dark fermions…
We present an extension of the SM involving three triplet fermions, one triplet scalar and one singlet fermion, which can explain both neutrino masses and dark matter. One triplet of fermions and the singlet are odd under a $Z_2$ symmetry,…
If the dark matter of the Universe is constituted by weakly interacting massive particles (WIMP), they would accumulate in the core of astrophysical objects as the Sun and annihilate into particles of the Standard Model. High-energy…
A simple and natural extension of the standard Lambda cold dark matter ($\Lambda$CDM) model is to allow relic neutrinos to have finite chemical potentials. We confront this $\Lambda$CDM$\xi$ model, a $\Lambda$CDM with neutrino mass $M_\nu$…