A Dark Matter Progenitor: Light Vector Boson Decay into (Sterile) Neutrinos

Abstract

We show that the existence of new, light gauge interactions coupled to Standard Model (SM) neutrinos give rise to an abundance of sterile neutrinos through the sterile neutrinos' mixing with the SM. Specifically, in the mass range of MeV-GeV and coupling of $g' \sim 10^{-6} - 10^{-2}$, the decay of this new vector boson in the early universe produces a sufficient quantity of sterile neutrinos to account for the observed dark matter abundance. Interestingly, this can be achieved within a natural extension of the SM gauge group, such as a gauged $L_\mu-L_\tau$ number, without any tree-level coupling between the new vector boson and the sterile neutrino states. Such new leptonic interactions might also be at the origin of the well-known discrepancy associated with the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon.