Dark Matter from PeV Physics and the Neutrino Sector

摘要

It is well known that the neutrino sector can provide a dark matter candidate in the form of a light sterile neutrino. This note discusses a framework that naturally leads to light (keV-GeV) sterile neutrino dark matter produced via the freeze-in mechanism: a modified, low energy seesaw with the right-handed neutrinos charged under a new symmetry broken by a PeV scale vacuum expectation value. This framework can accommodate the recently observed 3.5 keV X-ray line, while a straightforward extension, using the new symmetry and the PeV energy scale, can explain the PeV energy neutrino events at IceCube. Together, these can therefore be taken as hints of the existence of a PeV scale neutrino sector.