Speaker
Takuya Okawa
(Washington University in St. Louis)
Description
We study the kinetic heating of neutron stars due to their coherent scatterings with relic neutrinos via the neutral-current interactions. A neutron star gravitationally attracts relic neutrinos as it travels through the universe, gaining energy from heavy relic neutrinos by scatterings. The heating effect turns out to be possibly detectable by current and future optical/infrared telescopes. In particular, we show that a neutrino of any mass eigenstate with a mass $m_\nu \gtrsim$ a few $\times 100$ keV, which could outperform the current lab bound on the tau neutrino mass, can be probed by using this technique. We also discuss the observability of sterile neutrino dark matter through the neutron star heating effect.
Primary author
Takuya Okawa
(Washington University in St. Louis)
