Neutrino Masses and Sterile Neutrino Dark Matter from the PeV Scale

Abstract

We show that active neutrino masses and a keV-GeV mass sterile neutrino dark matter candidate can result from a modified, low energy seesaw mechanism if right-handed neutrinos are charged under a new symmetry broken by a scalar field vacuum expectation value at the PeV scale. The dark matter relic abundance can be obtained through active-sterile oscillation, freeze-in through the decay of the heavy scalar, or freeze-in via non-renormalizable interactions at high temperatures. The low energy effective theory maps onto the widely studied nuMSM framework.

Comments: 7 pages, 2 figures. v2: extended discussions, clarified notation, added references. major conclusions unchanged