Cosmology with self-interacting sterile neutrinos and dark matter - A pseudoscalar model

TL;DR

This paper proposes a pseudoscalar-mediated model where sterile neutrinos and dark matter interact to prevent thermalisation, improve cosmological fits, and address issues like structure formation and the Hubble tension.

Contribution

It introduces a novel pseudoscalar coupling mechanism that prevents sterile neutrino thermalisation and enhances dark matter self-interactions, aligning cosmological data with local measurements.

Findings

Prevents sterile neutrino thermalisation in the early Universe.

Provides a good fit to CMB data with self-interacting sterile neutrinos.

Increases the preferred value of H_0, reducing tension with local measurements.

Abstract

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 they can be prevented from thermalising in the early Universe or removed by subsequent decay or annihilation. Here we present a novel scenario in which both sterile neutrinos and dark matter are coupled to a new, light pseudoscalar. This can prevent thermalisation of sterile neutrinos and make dark matter sufficiently self-interacting to have an impact on galactic dynamics and possibly resolve some of the known problems with the standard cold dark matter scenario. Even more importantly it leads to a strongly self-interacting plasma of sterile neutrinos and pseudoscalars at late times and provides an excellent fit to CMB data. The usual cosmological neutrino mass problem is avoided by sterile neutrino annihilation to pseudoscalars. The preferred value of $H_0$ is substantially higher than in standard $\Lambda$CDM and in much better agreement with local measurements.