Dark matter from sterile-sterile neutrino mixing

Abstract

A solution to the problem of the origin of matter in the universe can be reasonably searched within extensions of the standard model that also explain neutrino masses and mixing. Models embedding the minimal seesaw mechanism can explain the observed matter-antimatter asymmetry of the universe via leptogenesis and dark matter via active-sterile neutrino mixing. In this case a keV lightest seesaw neutrino would play the role of warm dark matter particle. This traditional solution is now constrained by various cosmological observations. I will discuss the possibility that a much heavier but yet metastable (dark) right-handed neutrino with mass in the $1\,{\rm TeV}$--$1 \, {\rm PeV}$ range can play the role of (cold) dark matter particle. The right abundance would be produced by the Higgs induced mixing with a seesaw right-handed neutrino (RHINO model), i.e., by sterile-sterile neutrino mixing. Such a mixing would necessarily require a further extension of the minimal seesaw mechanism and can be described by a dimension-five effective operator. The same mixing would also necessarily induce dark neutrino instability with lifetimes that can be much longer than the age of the universe and can escape current constraints from neutrino telescopes. On the other hand, a contribution to very high energy neutrino flux produced by dark neutrino decays could explain an anomalous excess at 100 TeV energies confirmed recently by the IceCube collaboration. I will also discuss a simple UV completion where the mediator is given by a massive fermion. Intriguingly, it comes out that the favoured scale of new physics for RHINO to satisfy the dark matter requirements coincides with the grand-unified scale: a RHINO miracle.