Sterile neutrinos as subdominant warm dark matter

Abstract

In light of recent findings which seem to disfavor a scenario with (warm) dark matter entirely constituted of sterile neutrinos produced via the Dodelson-Widrow mechanism, we investigate the constraints attainable for this mechanism by relaxing the usual hypothesis that the relic neutrino abundance must necessarily account for all of the dark matter. We first study how to reinterpret the limits attainable from x-ray nondetection and Lyman-$\ensuremath{\alpha}$ forest measurements in the case that sterile neutrinos constitute only a fraction ${f}_{s}$ of the total amount of dark matter. Then, assuming that sterile neutrinos are generated in the early universe solely through the Dodelson-Widrow mechanism, we show how the x-ray and Lyman-$\ensuremath{\alpha}$ results jointly constrain the mass-mixing parameters governing their production. Furthermore, we show how the same data allow us to set a robust upper limit ${f}_{s}\ensuremath{\lesssim}0.7$ at the $2\ensuremath{\sigma}$ level, rejecting the case of dominant dark matter (${f}_{s}=1$) at the $\ensuremath{\sim}3\ensuremath{\sigma}$ level.