Thermal effects in $\nu$ DM production

Abstract

We study the possibility to produce a keV neutrino dark matter candidate through the two-body decays of heavy neutrinos present in TeV scale neutrino mass generation mechanism. Given that the dark matter production happens at the heavy neutrino scale, namely around the electroweak scale, we address thermal effects and study how these modify the dark matter production rates through freeze-in.

Comments: 6 pages; 3 figures. Contribution to the 2023 Electroweak session of the 57th Rencontres de Moriond