Almost closing the νMSM sterile neutrino dark matter window with NuSTAR

Abstract

We use NuSTAR observations of the Galactic center to search for x-ray lines from the radiative decay of sterile neutrino dark matter. Finding no evidence of unknown lines, we set limits on the sterile neutrino mass and mixing angle. In most of the mass range 10–50 keV, these are now the strongest limits, at some masses improving upon previous limits by a factor of ∼10. In the νMSM framework, where additional constraints from dark matter production and structure formation apply, the allowed parameter space is reduced by more than half. Future NuSTAR observations may be able to cover much of the remaining parameter space.