Sterile neutrinos

Neutrino masses are usually described by adding to the Standard Model some SU(2)-singlet fermions that have Yukawa couplings, as well as some Majorana mass terms. The number of such fields and the scales of their Majorana masses are not known. Several independent observations point to the possibility that some of these singlets may have masses well below the electroweak scale. A sterile neutrino with mass of a few keV can account for cosmological dark matter. The same particle would be emitted anisotropically from a cooling neutron star in the event of a supernova. This anisotropy can be large enough to explain the observed velocities of pulsars. A lighter sterile neutrino, with mass of the order of eV, is implied by the LSND results; it can have profound implications for cosmology. We review the physics of sterile neutrinos and the roles they may play in astrophysics and cosmology