Researchers at IIT Guwahati shed light on the great mystery

Researchers at IIT Guwahati have found distinctive similarities between the nature of Dark Matter and Neutrinos.

In the endeavour to unfold the nature of dark matter, a trio of theoretical physicists, Professor of Physics Arunansu Sil and two of his Ph.D. students Arghyajit Datta and Rishav Roshan of IIT Guwahati, Physics Department find that the origin and production of dark matter can actually be connected to the origin of neutrino mass, say researchers at IIT Guwahati.

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The work has recently been published in the leading international journal, Physical Review Letters, say researchers at IIT Guwahati

Physicists
For decades, physicists speculate the presence of ‘dark matter’ in our Universe. Though its existence is inferred from its gravitational effect on visible matter, supposed to make up 27% of the Universe, very little is known about it as no direct evidence in support of dark matter could be found so far indicating it as an exotic type of matter, say researchers at IIT Guwahati.

Researchers at IIT Guwahati say that at the same time, among all the known particles in nature, neutrinos are perhaps the most elusive particles.

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There are three flavours of neutrinos according to the Standard Model of particle physics, the immensely successful theoretical framework describing matter and interactions in nature, say researchers at IIT Guwahati.

This Standard Model predicts the neutrinos as massless. However, during late 90’s, it was found that neutrinos do have tiny mass, the exact magnitude of which is still unknown, say researchers at IIT Guwahati.

Neutrinos
Neutrinos are somewhat distinctive from other particles in the Standard Model as it is the only fermion which is of ’left-handed’ type, related to its spin projection, say researchers at IIT Guwahati.

The mystery of neutrino mass may be related to the lack of its right-handed counterpart. In fact, the present work of the team shows that the lightest right-handed or sterile neutrino, provided it exists as a part of a popular neutrino mass generation mechanism, having a mass of order a kilo to a mega electron-volts can be the dark matter candidate, say IIT Guwahati researchers.

Work of Researchers at IIT Guwahati

Professor Arunansu Sil, Department of Physics, IIT Guwahati spoke about the unique aspects of the work done by researchers at IIT Guwahati. Although strongly hinted by several astrophysical observations, the lack of any direct evidence of dark matter particles suggests that it has a very feeble interaction with ordinary matter, he said speaking about the work of researchers at IIT Guwahati.

Our proposal provides a clue to such a miniature interaction by showing that its smallness is connected to the lightness of the neutrino mass (smallest one) which is uniquely predicted to be in the pico electron-volt range, he said.

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Tiny neutrino mass
Argyajit Datta speaking about the work done by researchers at IIT Guwahati said apart from explaining the dark matter and tiny neutrino mass, the same construction also addresses the third mystery: why there is more matter than anti-matter in the Universe? The two remaining sterile neutrinos, other than the dark matter one, in the model are responsible for such an asymmetry.

Content of the universe
Rishav Roshan speaking about the work of researchers at IIT Guwahati said they here take an interesting step ahead by showing for the first time that in fact the entire dark matter content of the Universe can be produced from the decay of the mediators of the weak force in nature and the Higgs boson in the early Universe and can easily obey cosmological bounds.

Importance
Professor Sil spoke about the importance of the work done by IIT Guwahati researchers. ‘We here take an interesting step ahead by showing for the first time that in fact the entire dark matter content of the Universe can be produced from the decay of the mediators of the weak force in nature and the Higgs boson in the early Universe and can easily obey cosmological bounds, he said speaking about the work of researchers at IIT Guwahati.

Attempts
Attempts were there in the past also to use such sterile neutrinos as dark matter; however, those are currently under severe constraints from the non-observance of X-ray signal and cannot satisfy the observed dark matter density due to the difficulty associated with their production in the early Universe, say researchers at IIT Guwahati.