Decaying warm dark matter and neutrino masses

Abstract

Neutrino masses may arise from spontaneous breaking of ungauged lepton number. Because of quantum gravity effects the associated Goldstone boson -the majoron- will pick up a mass. We determine the lifetime and mass required by cosmic microwave background observations so that the massive majoron provides the observed dark matter of the Universe. The majoron decaying dark matter scenario fits nicely in models where neutrino masses arise via the seesaw mechanism, and may lead to other possible cosmological implications.