Speaker
Description
HUNTER (Heavy Unseen Neutrinos from Total Energy-momentum Reconstruction) is a future experiment that will search for additional “sterile” neutrinos beyond the Standard Model (BSM) using an instrument for radioactive atom trapping and high-resolution decay product spectrometry. HUNTER will be a concise experimental test for the existence of a sterile neutrino with masses between a 10-100 keV range, at a level beyond current laboratory experimental constraints. Neutrinos in this parameter space would indicate new physics in the early universe. We explore possible mechanisms of suppressing production of keV scale sterile neutrinos, within the HUNTER parameter space. Some of these new physics paths include universes with a nontrivial cosmic lepton number, new neutrino interactions with light bosons, late-time neutrino mass generation, low reheating temperature universes, or phase transitions in the early universe. We analyze which of these scenarios could explain the first detected remnant from the untested pre-BBN era in the Universe.
