Seminar - Dark matter and neutrino masses in the Inverse Seesaw mechanism

by Michele Lucente (LPT and Sissa)

Tuesday 6 Oct 2015, 11:00 → 12:00 Europe/Brussels

E/3rd floor-E.361 - Meeting room (E.361) (Marc de Hemptinne (chemin du Cyclotron, 2, Louvain-la-Neuve))

The origin of neutrino masses and the nature of dark matter are two pressing open questions in particle and astroparticle physics. In this talk I will present a viable common solution for both these issues, the Inverse Seesaw (ISS) mechanism, which is a testable framework characterised by a TeV or lower new physics scale. I will present the different realisations of the ISS and the appearance of a light sterile fermion in a minimal framework, and I will address the viability of this state as a dark matter candidate, considering the different possible production mechanisms and the related cosmological constraints. The model accounts in general for a mixed (cold plus warm) dark matter population, and the dark matter particle can decay producing a detectable signal.