Can Neutrino Self-interactions Save Sterile Neutrino Dark Matter?

TL;DR

This paper investigates whether sterile neutrino dark matter produced through neutrino self-interactions can account for observed cosmic structures, finding that strong self-coupling scenarios are excluded, but light mediators remain viable.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive analysis linking sterile neutrino production via self-interactions to small-scale structure constraints, establishing bounds on mediator mass and coupling.

Findings

Strong neutrino self-coupling with heavy mediators is excluded by structure formation data.

Light mediators allow sterile neutrino dark matter consistent with observations.

A lower mass bound of 37 keV is derived for sterile neutrinos from structure constraints.

Abstract

Sterile neutrinos only interact with the Standard Model through the neutrino sector, and thus represent a simple dark matter (DM) candidate with many potential astrophysical and cosmological signatures. Recently, sterile neutrinos produced through self-interactions of active neutrinos have received attention as a particle candidate that can yield the entire observed DM relic abundance without violating the most stringent constraints from X-ray observations. We examine consistency of this production mechanism with the abundance of small-scale structure in the universe, as captured by the population of ultra-faint dwarf galaxies orbiting the Milky Way, and derive a lower bound on the sterile-neutrino particle mass of $37$ keV. Combining these results with previous limits from particle physics and astrophysics excludes $100\%$ sterile neutrino DM produced by strong neutrino self-coupling, mediated by a heavy ($\gtrsim 1~\mathrm{GeV}$) scalar particle; however, data permits sterile-neutrino DM production via a light mediator.