Searching for keV Sterile Neutrino Dark Matter with X-Ray Microcalorimeter Sounding Rockets

High-resolution X-ray spectrometers onboard suborbital sounding rockets can search for dark matter candidates that produce X-ray lines, such as decaying keV-scale sterile neutrinos. Even with exposure times and effective areas far smaller than XMM-Newton and Chandra observations, high-resolution, wide field of view observations with sounding rockets have competitive sensitivity to decaying sterile neutrinos. We analyze a subset of the 2011 observation by the X-ray Quantum Calorimeter instrument centered on Galactic coordinates l=165°,b=-5° with an effective exposure of 106 s, obtaining a limit on the sterile neutrino mixing angle of {{sin}}²2θ < 7.2× {10}^-10 at 95% CL for a 7 keV neutrino. Better sensitivity at the level of {{sin}}²2θ ∼ 2.1× {10}^-11 at 95% CL for a 7 keV neutrino is achievable with future 300-s observations of the galactic center by the Micro-X instrument, providing a definitive test of the sterile neutrino interpretation of the reported 3.56 keV excess from galaxy clusters.