  We determine the abundance of the lightest (dark matter) sterile neutrinos
created in the Early Universe due to active-sterile neutrino transitions from
the thermal plasma. Our starting point is the field-theoretic formula for the
sterile neutrino production rate, derived in our previous work [JHEP
06(2006)053], which allows to systematically incorporate all relevant effects,
and also to analyse various hadronic uncertainties. Our numerical results
differ moderately from previous computations in the literature, and lead to an
absolute upper bound on the mixing angles of the dark matter sterile neutrino.
Comparing this bound with existing astrophysical X-ray constraints, we find
that the Dodelson-Widrow scenario, which proposes sterile neutrinos generated
by active-sterile neutrino transitions to be the sole source of dark matter, is
only possible for sterile neutrino masses lighter than 3.5 keV (6 keV if all
hadronic uncertainties are pushed in one direction and the most stringent X-ray
bounds are relaxed by a factor of two). This upper bound may conflict with a
lower bound from structure formation, but a definitive conclusion necessitates
numerical simulations with the non-equilibrium momentum distribution function
that we derive. If other production mechanisms are also operative, no upper
bound on the sterile neutrino mass can be established.
