On the hadronic contribution to sterile neutrino production
May, 200628 pages
Published in:
- JHEP 06 (2006) 053
e-Print:
- hep-ph/0605209 [hep-ph]
Report number:
- TU-770,
- BI-TP-2006-17,
- CERN-PH-TH-2006-085
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Abstract:
Sterile neutrinos with masses in the keV range are considered to be a viable candidate for warm dark matter. The rate of their production through active-sterile neutrino transitions peaks, however, at temperatures of the order of the QCD scale, which makes it difficult to estimate their relic abundance quantitatively, even if the mass of the sterile neutrino and its mixing angle were known. We derive here a relation, valid to all orders in the strong coupling constant, which expresses the production rate in terms of the spectral function associated with active neutrinos. The latter can in turn be expressed as a certain convolution of the spectral functions related to various mesonic current-current correlation functions, which are being actively studied in other physics contexts. In the naive weak coupling limit, the appropriate Boltzmann equations can be derived from our general formulae.Note:
- 28 pages. v2: small clarifications added, published version Journal-ref: JHEP 0606 (2006) 053
- neutrino: sterile
- neutrino: production
- neutrino: oscillation
- neutrino: mass
- neutrino: mixing angle
- strong interaction: coupling constant
- spectral representation
- quantum chromodynamics
- meson: current
- correlation function
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