Neutrinos with refractive masses and the DESI BAO results

TL;DR

This paper investigates how neutrinos acquiring refractive masses through dark matter interactions affect cosmic structure formation, showing they were ultrarelativistic during key epochs, reconciling oscillation data with cosmological bounds.

Contribution

It introduces a model where neutrinos gain refractive masses via dark matter interactions and analyzes their impact on structure formation and cosmological observations.

Findings

Refractive masses behave like vacuum masses above resonance energy.

Below resonance, refractive masses decrease with energy.

Relic neutrinos were ultrarelativistic during structure formation epochs.

Abstract

Due to interactions with dark matter, neutrinos can acquire refractive masses which explain the data from oscillation experiments. We study the effects of relic neutrinos with refractive masses on structure formation in the Universe. In the model with a light fermionic mediator, above the resonance energy, $E_R$, associated with the mass of the mediator, refractive masses have all the properties identical to the usual vacuum masses. Below the resonance, refractive masses decrease with neutrino energy, however, they cannot be used in the same way as usual masses. We study the dispersion relations and group velocities of such neutrinos and their dependence on redshift. We show that in the epoch of structure formation, relic neutrinos were ultrarelativistic and essentially massless particles for $E_R = (10 - 10^5)\,$eV. This allows to reconcile the values of masses extracted from oscillation experiments with the stringent bounds on sum of neutrino masses from cosmological surveys.