X-ray searches for decaying sterile neutrinos with the Micro-X and XQC sounding rockets

The nature of dark matter is a major question in modern physics. Cosmological measurements have motivated the existence of matter beyond the standard model, but thus far there has not been a definitive observation of any particular candidate. One proposed particle is the sterile neutrino, a counterpart of the observed active neutrino with right-handed chirality. A recent detection of an unidentified X-ray emission line has been suggested as a possible signal of sterile neutrino decay, but requires more observations with high-resolution spectroscopy to fully explore the nature of the line. In the first half of this thesis, we present the results from a search for a similar unidentified line, using data from the X-ray Quantum Calorimeter (XQC) sounding rocket.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Goldfinger, David Charles.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Enectali Figueroa-Feliciano and Claude Canizares.

• Physics.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/128324

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/128324