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Heating the intergalactic medium by radiative decay of neutrinos

M. H. Chan·M. -C. Chu
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Abstract

Assuming that there exists a species of heavy sterile neutrinos($m_ν>1$ keV) and their decays can serve as a heating source of the hot gas in galaxy clusters, we study how the observational constraints on cooling flow limit the mass of these sterile neutrinos. We predict a relation among the luminosity, total mass and the redshift of a cluster, and we compare this relation with data from 12 clusters to obtain an estimate of the decay rate of the sterile neutrino.

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M. H. Chan, M. -C. Chu. 2006-09-20. Heating the intergalactic medium by radiative decay of neutrinos. https://doi.org/10.1086/511743

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