IIT Guwahati researchers shed light on the mystery of dark matter using neutrinos

IIT Guwahati researchers find that the origin and production of dark matter can be related to the origin of neutrino mass.

The Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati researchers have found distinctive similarities between the nature of Dark Matter and Neutrinos. In the endeavour to unfold the nature of dark matter, a trio of theoretical physicists, Professor of Physics Arunansu Sil and two of his PhD. students Arghyajit Datta and Rishav Roshan of IIT Guwahati, Physics Department find that the origin and production of dark matter can actually be connected to the origin of neutrino mass.

The work has recently been published in the leading international journal, Physical Review Letters.

For decades, physicists speculate about the presence of ‘dark matter' in our Universe. Though its existence is inferred from its gravitational effect on visible matter, supposed to make up 27 percent of the Universe, very little is known about it as no direct evidence in support of dark matter could be found so far indicating it as an exotic type of matter.

At the same time, among all the known particles in nature, neutrinos are perhaps the most elusive particles.

There are three flavours of neutrinos according to the Standard Model of particle physics, the immensely successful theoretical framework describing matter and interactions in nature.

This Standard Model predicts the neutrinos as massless. However, during the late ’90s, it was found that neutrinos do have a tiny mass, the exact magnitude of which is still unknown.