The nature of dark matter is one of the most important unsolved questions in science. Some dark matter candidates do not have sufficient nongravitational interactions to be probed in laboratory or accelerator experiments. It is thus important to develop astrophysical probes which can constrain or lead to a discovery of such candidates. We illustrate this using state-of-the-art measurements of strong gravitationally lensed quasars to constrain four of the most popular sterile neutrino models, and also report the constraints for other independent methods that are comparable in procedure. First, we derive effective relations to describe the correspondence between the mass of a thermal relic warm dark matter particle and the mass of sterile neutrinos produced via Higgs decay and grand unified theory (GUT)-scale scenarios, in terms of large-scale structure and galaxy formation astrophysical effects. Second, we show that sterile neutrinos produced through the Higgs decay mechanism are allowed only for mass $>26\mathrm{keV}$, and GUT-scale scenario $>5.3\mathrm{keV}$. Third, we show that the single sterile neutrino model produced through active neutrino oscillations is allowed for mass $>92\mathrm{keV}$, and the three sterile neutrino minimal standard model ($\nu \mathrm{MSM}$) for mass $>16\mathrm{keV}$. These are the most stringent experimental limits on these models.

• Received 24 March 2022
• Revised 3 August 2022
• Accepted 20 September 2022
• Corrected 16 December 2022

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.191301

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP³.

Published by the American Physical Society