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  • Letter
  • Open Access

Addressing the Hubble tension with sterile neutrino dark matter

Debtosh Chowdhury* and Md Sariful Islam†

  • *Contact author: debtoshc@iitk.ac.in
  • †Contact author: sariful21@iitk.ac.in
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Phys. Rev. D 114, L061303 – Published 21 September, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/rzfh-mt6z

Abstract

One of the promising dark matter (DM) candidates is a keV-scale sterile neutrino. In the early Universe, the observed relic of the sterile neutrino DM is generated via the Dodelson-Widrow mechanism. However, this production scenario is severely constrained by various astrophysical observations. Many nonstandard interactions between active (νa) and sterile (νs) neutrinos have been proposed to evade these astrophysical bounds. Here, we study sterile neutrinos in the context of a mass-varying scenario by coupling both active and sterile neutrinos to a scalar field. This novel mechanism opens up a new parameter space that generates the observed DM relic and addresses the Hubble tension. We find that the resulting parameter space can be fully probed by future x-ray missions.

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Phys. Rev. D 114, L061303– Published 21 September, 2026
  • Received 12 March 2026
  • Accepted 12 August 2026
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