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TeV-scale origin of light dark matter and neutrino mass

Cheng-Wei Chiang1,2,*, Shu-Yu Ho3,†, and Van Que Tran2,4,‡

  • *Contact author: chengwei@phys.ntu.edu.tw
  • †Contact author: shuyuho@as.edu.tw
  • ‡Contact author: vqtran@phys.ncts.ntu.edu.tw
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Phys. Rev. D 114, 055017 – Published 10 September, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/s986-nbtm

Abstract

We demonstrate that TeV-scale heavy neutral leptons (HNLs) responsible for inverse-seesaw neutrino mass generation can simultaneously fix the cosmological abundance and decay properties of dark matter (DM). The spontaneous breaking of lepton number gives rise to a pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson that serves as a light DM candidate, whose mass originates from a small explicit symmetry-breaking term. The same HNLs that generate neutrino masses produce the DM via freeze-in and mediate its decay into neutrinos, leading to a tight correlation among neutrino masses, DM relic abundance, and DM lifetime. For collider-accessible TeV-scale HNLs, the observed relic density and lifetime constraints point to sub-GeV DM, yielding observable neutrino signals at JUNO and next-generation detectors such as Hyper-Kamiokande and DUNE. This framework establishes a predictive and experimentally testable link between neutrino mass generation and DM.

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Phys. Rev. D 114, 055017– Published 10 September, 2026
  • Received 2 April 2026
  • Accepted 12 August 2026
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