Related papers: Light WIMPs And Equivalent Neutrinos
In a non-standard cosmological scenario, heavy, long-lived particles, which we call moduli, dominate the energy density prior to Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) may be produced non-thermally from…
We consider a weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) dark matter (DM) annihilating into all possible Standard Model (SM) particle pairs, including the SM neutrinos, via $s$-wave processes and derive the branching ratio independent upper…
We compute in detail the rate at which energy injected by dark matter annihilation heats and ionizes the photon-baryon plasma at z ~ 1000, and provide accurate fitting functions over the relevant redshift range for a broad array of…
In the mixed dark matter scenarios consisting of primordial black holes (PBHs) and weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), WIMPs can be accreted onto PBHs to form ultracompact minihalos (UCMHs) with a density spike in the early…
Dark matter is approximately five times more abundant than baryonic matter in the universe, but its physical nature continues to elude physicists. One potential candidate for dark matter is a weakly-interacting massive particle (WIMP),…
Using a new sample of extremely metal poor systems, the EMPRESS survey has recently reported a primordial helium abundance that is $3\sigma$ smaller than the prediction from the standard big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) scenario. This…
Tantalizing cosmological and terrestrial evidence suggests the number of light neutrinos may be greater than 3, motivating a careful re-examination of cosmological bounds on extra light species. Big Bang Nucleosynthesis constrains the…
We investigate the radiative decay of the cosmic neutrino background, and its impact on the spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) that is known to be a nearly perfect black body. We derive exact formulae for the decay of a…
Although it is usually thought that a class of weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) dark matters (DMs), which have the vector coupling with the $Z$ boson, is denied by null results of the direct DM searches, such WIMP DMs are still…
We explore the implications of the existence of heavy neutral fermions (i.e., sterile neutrinos) for the thermal history of the early universe. In particular, we consider sterile neutrinos with rest masses in the 100 MeV to 500 MeV range,…
Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) are a viable candidate for the relic abundance of dark matter (DM) produced in the early universe. So far WIMPs have eluded direct detection through interactions with baryonic matter. Neutrino…
We discuss the lower limit on the mass of the neutralino $\chi$ that can be obtained by combining data from $e^+e^-$ annihilation at LEP and elsewhere with astrophysical and theoretical considerations. Loopholes in the purely experimental…
The internal structure of the Standard Model implies a natural $\mathbb{Z}_4 \times \mathbb{Z}_3$ discrete gauge symmetry. Cancellation of the corresponding Dai--Freed anomalies requires the introduction of three right-handed neutrinos and…
Cold dark matter may be made of superweakly-interacting massive particles, superWIMPs, that naturally inherit the desired relic density from late decays of metastable WIMPs. Well-motivated examples are weak-scale gravitinos in supergravity…
Very different processes characterize the decoupling of neutrinos to form the cosmic neutrino background (C$\nu$B) and the much later decoupling of photons from thermal equilibrium to form the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The C$\nu$B…
Although the MiniBooNE experiment has severely restricted the possible existence of light sterile neutrinos, a few anomalies persist in oscillation data, and the possibility of extra light species contributing as a subdominant hot (or warm)…
During Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN), in the first 20 minutes of the evolution of the Universe, the light nuclides, D, 3He, 4He, and 7Li were synthesized in astrophysically interesting abundances. The Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation…
We consider the cosmological effects of sterile neutrinos with the masses of $150- 450$ MeV. The decay of sterile neutrinos changes the thermal history of the Universe and affects the energy density of radiation at the recombination and the…
Super-Kamiokande (SK) can search for weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) by detecting neutrinos produced from WIMP annihilations occurring inside the Sun. In this analysis, we include neutrino events with interaction vertices in…
Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) are among the favored candidates for cold dark matter in the universe. The phenomenology of supersymmetric WIMPs has been quite developed during recent years. However, there are other…