Phasing out of Darkness: From Sterile Neutrino Dark Matter to Neutrino Masses via Time-Dependent Mixing

TL;DR

This paper proposes a time-dependent mechanism to reconcile sterile neutrino dark matter models with X-ray constraints, linking neutrino mass generation and dark matter decay through a late phase transition.

Contribution

It introduces a minimal model with a late phase transition that dynamically increases active-sterile mixing, enabling compatibility with observational constraints and neutrino mass measurements.

Findings

Time-dependent active-sterile mixing can evade X-ray constraints.

Model predicts detectable active-sterile mixing levels in future experiments.

Pre-phase transition neutrinos are massless, testable by cosmological surveys.

Abstract

Sterile neutrinos are a compelling candidate for generating neutrino masses and for elucidating the nature of dark matter. Astrophysical X-ray constraints on sterile neutrino dark matter decays, however, largely exclude the active-sterile mixing required to produce simultaneously the correct left-handed neutrino spectrum and keV-scale right-handed neutrino dark matter within a type-I seesaw framework. In this study, we demonstrate how these X-ray constraints can be circumvented through a time-dependent approach, thereby reviving a broad range of active-sterile mixing scenarios. Our minimal model incorporates two right-handed neutrinos, which form a two-component dark matter candidate, and an auxiliary scalar field that experiences a very late and still ongoing phase transition, leading to the spontaneous breaking of a global $ U(1)_N $ symmetry. Prior to this phase transition, only the right-handed neutrinos are massive, while the left-handed neutrinos remain massless because of the scalar field's vanishing expectation value. As the phase transition develops, the growing expectation value of the scalar field increases the active-sterile mixing, thereby opening dark matter decay channels and inducing neutrino masses. The time dependence allows the scenario to be consistent with X-ray constraints as well as current measurements of left-handed neutrino masses. The anticipated level of active-sterile mixing today is within the detection capabilities of the forthcoming TRISTAN (KATRIN) tritium-beta decay project. Additionally, cosmological surveys such as DESI or EUCLID and supernova neutrino observations can test the prediction of massless left-handed neutrinos prior to the phase transition.