Fuzzy dark matter and nonstandard neutrino interactions

Abstract

We discuss novel ways in which neutrino oscillation experiments can probe dark matter. In particular, we focus on interactions between neutrinos and ultralight ("fuzzy") dark matter particles with masses of order 10 −22 eV. It has been shown previously that such dark matter candidates are phenomenologically successful and might help ameliorate the tension between predicted and observed small scale structures in the Universe. We argue that coherent forward scattering of neutrinos on fuzzy dark matter particles can significantly alter neutrino oscillation probabilities. These effects could be observable in current and future experiments. We set new limits on fuzzy dark matter interacting with neutrinos using T2K and solar neutrino data, and we estimate the sensitivity of reactor neutrino experiments and of future long-baseline accelerator experiments. These results are based on detailed simulations in GLoBES. We allow the dark matter particle to be either a scalar or a vector boson. In the latter case, we find potentially interesting connections to models addressing various B physics anomalies.

Wolfenstein potentials for neutrinos induced by ultra-light mediators

“…where F r<R and F r>R are given by the lower and the upper lines of Eq. (21). For more realistic profiles with many layers, the generalization is straightforward.…”

“…where V SM ≡ √ 2G F n ψ , and F presented in Eqs. (21) describes the deviation from the standard Wolfenstein potential. According to Eq.…”

“…The matter effects due to light mediators have been studied before [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21]. The mediators, mostly considered in the literature, are new gauge bosons of the lepton numbers L e −L µ , L µ −L τ or L τ −L e .…”

Mononeutrino at DUNE: New signals from neutrinophilic thermal dark matter

“…[40][41][42][43][44]. The direct impact of dark-matter-neutrino interactions on the observed neutrino oscillation probabilities [45][46][47] has been recently investigated in the context of fuzzy dark matter models [48][49][50]. These existing works represent the wide range of dark matter theory space and the corresponding signals that can be searched for using multipurpose neutrino detectors.…”

Ultra-light scalar saving the 3 + 1 neutrino scheme from the cosmological bounds

“…Refs. [29][30][31] assume a Yukawa coupling between φ and active neutrinos and discuss the implication of the oscillatory behavior of φ with time on the temporal modulation of various neutrino beams. Ref.…”