Spanish and Portuguese Relativity Meeting

Neutron decay anomaly, dark matter and neutron stars

22 Jul 2024, 11:40

20m

Auditorium C.1

Speaker

Mar Bastero Gil (University of Granada)

Description

The discrepancies in measurements of the lifetime of the neutrons could be resolved considering an extra neutron decay channel into dark matter, with a branching ratio of the order of O(1%). Although the decay channel into a dark fermion $\chi$ plus visible matter has been already experimentally excluded, a dark decay into a dark matter fermion plus either a scalar or dark photon remains still a possibility. In particular, a model with a fermion mass $m_{\chi }\approx 1$ GeV and a scalar $m_{\varphi }\approx 1-2$ MeV could provide not only the required branching ratio to explain the anomaly but also a good dark matter candidate with the right thermal abundance today, and being consistent with neutron stars physics.

Presentation materials

Talk_neutrondecayDMNS_MarBasteroGil.pdf