We explore the mechanism that can explain the production of lepton asymmetry and two types of sterile neutrino dark matter. The first type involves heavy sterile dark matter produced directly by the decay of Q-balls which are formed by first-order phase transition in the early universe; the second consists of keV sterile neutrino dark matter, produced resonantly with the aid of lepton asymmetry from Q-ball decay. Besides, gravitational waves from cosmic strings generated during the phase transition process could be detected at future interferometers.

China

Jiucheng Ma

Siyu Jiang

Xiu-Fei Li

Impact of Q-balls formed by first-order phase transition on sterile neutrino dark matter

We consider right-handed neutrino dark matter N1 in local U(1)LÎ¼âLÏ -extended Ma model. With the light U(1)Î¼âÏ gauge boson ( mZâ²â¼O(100)Â MeV ) and small U(1)Î¼âÏ gauge coupling ( gZâ²â¼10â4â10â3 ) which can accommodate the muon (gâ2) anomaly and is still allowed by other experimental constraints, we show that we can get correct relic density of dark matter for wide range of dark matter mass ( M1â¼10â200Â GeV ), although the gauge coupling constant gZâ² is small. This is due to the fact that the annihilation cross section of dark matter pair is enhanced by M14/mZâ²4 in the processes N1N1âZâ²Zâ² or N1N1âZâ²H2 . We also consider the constraints from direct detection, collider searches.