Abstract
Abstract
We investigate the impact of new light particles, carrying significant energy in the early universe after neutrino decoupling, on the cosmological effective relativistic neutrino species, Neff. If the light particles are produced from decoupled neutrinos, Neff is predominantly modified through the dilution-resistant effect. This effect arises because the energy stored in the mass of new particles is less diluted than the photon and neutrino energy as the universe expands. Our study comprehensively explores this effect, deriving Neff constraints on the couplings of light mediators with neutrinos, encompassing both scalar and vector mediators. We find that the dilution-resistant effect can increase Neff by 0.118 and 0.242 for scalar and vector mediators, respectively. These values can be readily reached by forthcoming CMB experiments. Upon reaching these levels, future Neff constraints on the couplings will be improved by many orders of magnitude.
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Subject
Nuclear and High Energy Physics
Reference61 articles.
1. Planck collaboration, Planck 2018 results. VI. Cosmological parameters, Astron. Astrophys. 641 (2020) A6 [arXiv:1807.06209] [Erratum ibid. 652 (2021) C4] [INSPIRE].
2. P.F. de Salas and S. Pastor, Relic neutrino decoupling with flavour oscillations revisited, JCAP 07 (2016) 051 [arXiv:1606.06986] [INSPIRE].
3. M. Escudero Abenza, Precision early universe thermodynamics made simple: Neff and neutrino decoupling in the Standard Model and beyond, JCAP 05 (2020) 048 [arXiv:2001.04466] [INSPIRE].
4. K. Akita and M. Yamaguchi, A precision calculation of relic neutrino decoupling, JCAP 08 (2020) 012 [arXiv:2005.07047] [INSPIRE].
5. J.J. Bennett et al., Towards a precision calculation of Neff in the Standard Model II: Neutrino decoupling in the presence of flavour oscillations and finite-temperature QED, JCAP 04 (2021) 073 [arXiv:2012.02726] [INSPIRE].