Relic keV sterile neutrinos and reionization

Phys Rev Lett. 2006 Mar 10;96(9):091301. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.96.091301. Epub 2006 Mar 8.

Abstract

A sterile neutrino with a mass of several keV can account for cosmological dark matter, as well as explain the observed velocities of pulsars. We show that x rays produced by the decays of these relic sterile neutrinos can boost the production of molecular hydrogen, which can speed up the cooling of gas and the early star formation, which can, in turn, lead to a reionization of the Universe at a high enough redshift to be consistent with the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe results.