Related papers: Cosmology of "Visible" Sterile Neutrinos
We present here a scenario, based on a low reheating temperature T_R << 100 MeV at the end of (the last episode of) inflation, in which the coupling of sterile neutrinos to active neutrinos can be as large as experimental bounds permit…
It is commonly assumed that the cosmological and astrophysical bounds on the mixings of sterile with active neutrinos are much more stringent than those obtained from laboratory measurements. We point out that in scenarios with a very low…
A laboratory detection of a sterile neutrino could provide the first indication of the evolution of the Universe before Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN), an epoch yet untested. Such "visible" sterile neutrinos are observable in upcoming…
The expansion history and thermal physical process that happened in the early Universe before big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) remains relatively unconstrained by observations. Low reheating temperature universes with normalcy temperatures of…
We discuss how a laboratory detection of a sterile neutrino not only would constitute a fundamental discovery of a new particle, but could also provide an indication of the evolution of the Universe before Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN), a…
By combining data from cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments (including the recent WMAP third year results), large scale structure (LSS) and Lyman-alpha forest observations, we constrain the hypothesis of a fourth, sterile, massive…
We introduce a cosmological invisible decay of the sterile neutrino with the eV-scale mass indicated by short-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments in order to allow its full thermalization in the early Universe. We show that the fit of…
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)…
Several long-standing anomalies from short-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments -- most recently corroborated by new data from MiniBooNE -- have led to the hypothesis that extra, 'sterile', neutrino species might exist. Models of this…
Standard simple assumptions are usually made about the pre-Big Bang Nucleosynthesis epoch, from which we do not have observations. Modifying these assumptions, the predicted density of relic particles such as neutralinos and sterile…
Sterile neutrinos are natural extensions to the standard model of particle physics in neutrino mass generation mechanisms. If they are relatively light, less than approximately 10 keV, they can alter cosmology significantly, from the early…
We investigate observable cosmological aspects of sterile neutrino dark matter produced via the freeze-in mechanism. The study is performed in a framework that admits many cosmologically interesting variations: high temperature production…
We study the production of sterile neutrinos in the early universe from $\pi \rightarrow l \nu_s$ shortly after the QCD phase transition in the absence of a lepton asymmetry while including finite temperature corrections to the $\pi$ mass…
Light sterile neutrinos represent a well-motivated extension of the 3-neutrino paradigm. However, the impressive agreement between standard cosmology and data casts doubts on their existence. Here we present a class of scenarios that…
We investigate how sterile neutrinos with a range of masses influence cosmology in MeV-scale reheating temperature scenarios. By computing the production of sterile neutrinos through the combination of mixing and scattering in the early…
The connection between cosmological observations and neutrino physics is discussed in detail. Neutrinos decouple from thermal contact in the early Universe at a temperature of order 1 MeV which coincides with the temperature where light…
A sterile neutrino in addition to the three known neutrinos seems unavoidable if one wants a simultaneous understanding of the results of the LSND experiment indicating $\nu_{\mu}-\nu_e$ oscillation together with other evidences for…
Short baseline neutrino oscillation experiments have shown hints of the existence of additional sterile neutrinos in the eV mass range. Such sterile neutrinos are incompatible with cosmology because they suppress structure formation unless…
The detection of a sterile neutrino could constitute the first observation of a particle that could have been produced before Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN), and could provide information about the yet untested pre-BBN era. The cosmological…
Recent cosmological data favour additional relativistic degrees of freedom beyond the three active neutrinos and photons, often referred to as 'dark' radiation. Light sterile neutrinos is one of the prime candidates for such additional…