Heavy neutrino dark matter in the solar system

Abstract

We study a simple model of dark matter that is gravitationally clustered around the sun in the form of a spherical halo of a degenerate gas of heavy neutrinos. It is shown that for neutrino masses $m_ν \stackrel {\textstyle <}{\sim} 16~{\rm keV}/c^{2}$, the resulting matter distribution is consistent with the constraints on the mass excesses within the orbits of the outer planets, as obtained from astrometrical and the Pioneer 10/11 and Voyager 1/2 (Anderson et al. 1995) ranging data. However, the anomalous acceleration recently detected in the Pioneer 10/11 data that is approximately constant between 40 AU and 60 AU (Anderson et al. 1998; Turyshev et al. 1999) is incompatible with both our model and earlier Pioneer 10/11 ranging data for the outer planets. We then calculate the planetary and asteroidal perihelion shifts generated by such a neutrino halo. For $m_ν \stackrel{\textstyle <}{\sim}16~{\rm keV}/c^{2}$, our results are consistent with the observational data on Mercury, Venus, Earth and Icarus.Finally, we propose to detect this neutrino halo directly with a dedicated experiment on Earth, observing the X-rays emitted in the radiative decay of the heavy neutrino into a light neutrino and a photon.