Reactor sterile neutrinos, dark energy and the age of the universe

Abstract

There are indications that the neutrino oscillation data from reactor experiments and the LSND and MiniBooNE experiments show a preference for two sterile neutrino species, both with masses in the eV region. We show that this result has a significant impact on some important cosmological parameters. Specifically, we use a combination of CMB, LSS and SN1A data and show that the existence of two light, sterile neutrinos would rule out the cosmological constant as dark energy at 95% confidence level, and lower the expansion age of the universe to 12.58 \pm 0.26 Gyr.

Comments: Accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics. References added and typos corrected. Added numerical values for w ranges and Delta chi^2. Minor extension of discussion