Big-bang nucleosynthesis limit on the neutral fermion decays into neutrinos

Abstract

Using the primordial helium abundance, an upper limit to the magnetic moments for Dirac neutrinos had been provided by imposing restrictions on the number of the additional helicity states. Considering nonthermal photons produced in the decay of the heavy sterile mass eigenstates due to the neutrino magnetic moment, we explore the constraints imposed by the observed abundances of all the light elements produced during the big-bang nucleosynthesis.