Low-scale leptogenesis with three heavy neutrinos

Leptogenesis induced by the oscillations of GeV-scale neutrinos provides a minimal and testable explanation of the baryon asymmetry of the Universe. In this work we extend previous studies invoking only two heavy neutrinos to the case of three heavy neutrinos. We find qualitatively new behaviour as a result of lepton number violating oscillations and decays, strong flavour effects in the washout and a resonant enhancement due to matter effects. An approximate global B-L symmetry (representing the difference of baryon and a generalised lepton number) can protect the light neutrino masses from large radiative corrections, while simultaneously providing the ingredients for the resonant enhancement of the lepton asymmetry due to thermal contributions to the heavy neutrino dispersion relations. This mechanism is particularly efficient for large heavy neutrino mixing angles near the current experimental limits, a regime in which leptogenesis is not feasible in the minimal scenario with two heavy neutrinos. In this new parameter regime, low-scale leptogenesis is testable by the LHC and other existing experiments.

Neutrinoless double beta decay and low scale leptogenesis

Marco Drewes, Shintaro Eijima

The extension of the Standard Model by right handed neutrinos with masses in the GeV range can simultaneously explain the observed neutrino masses via the seesaw mechanism and the baryon asymmetry of the universe via leptogenesis. It has previously been claimed that the requirement for successful baryogenesis implies that the rate of neutrinoless double beta decay in this scenario is always smaller than the standard prediction from light neutrino exchange alone. In contrast, we find that the rate for this process can also be enhanced due to a dominant contribution from heavy neutrino exchange. In a small part of the parameter space it even exceeds the current experimental limit, while the properties of the heavy neutrinos are consistent with all other experimental constraints and the observed baryon asymmetry is reproduced. This implies that neutrinoless double beta decay experiments have already started to rule out part of the leptogenesis parameter space that is not constrained by any other experiment, and the lepton number violation that is responsible for the origin of baryonic matter in the universe may be observed in the near future. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Elsevier2016

Reconciling resonant leptogenesis and baryogenesis via neutrino oscillations

Juraj Klaric, Inar Timiryasov

Right-handed neutrinos offer an elegant solution to two well-established phenomena beyond the Standard Model (SM)-masses and oscillations of neutrinos, as well as the baryon asymmetry of the Universe. It is also a minimalistic solution, since it requires only singlet Majorana fermions to be added to the SM particle content. If these fermions are nearly degenerate, the mass scale of right-handed neutrinos can be very low and accessible by the present and planned experiments. There are at least two well-studied mechanisms of low-scale leptogenesis: baryogenesis via oscillations and resonant leptogenesis. These two mechanisms were often considered separate, but they can, in fact, be understood as two different regimes of one and the same mechanism, described by a unique set of quantum kinetic equations. In this work, we show, using a unified description based on quantum kinetic equations, that the parameter spaces of these two regimes of low-scale leptogenesis significantly overlap. We present a comprehensive study of the parameter space of low-scale leptogenesis with the mass scale ranging from 0.1 to similar to 10(6) GeV. The unified perspective of this work reveals the synergy between intensity and energy frontiers in the quest for heavy Majorana neutrinos.

AMER PHYSICAL SOC2021

Freeze-out of baryon number in low-scale leptogenesis

Shintaro Eijima, Inar Timiryasov

Low-scale leptogenesis provides an economic and testable description of the origin of the baryon asymmetry of the Universe. In this scenario, the baryon asymmetry of the Universe is reprocessed from the lepton asymmetry by electroweak sphaleron processes. Provided that sphalerons are fast enough to maintain equilibrium, the values of the baryon and lepton asymmetries are related to each other. Usually, this relation is used to find the value of the baryon asymmetry at the time of the sphaleron freeze-out. To put in other words, the formula which is valid only when the sphalerons are fast, is applied at the moment when they are actually switched off. In this paper, we examine the validity of such a treatment. To this end, we solve the full system of kinetic equations for low-scale leptogenesis. This system includes equations describing the production of the lepton asymmetry in oscillations of right-handed neutrinos, as well as a separate kinetic equation for the baryon asymmetry. We show that for some values of the model parameters, the corrections to the standard approach are sizeable. We also present a feasible improvement to the ordinary procedure, which accounts for these corrections.

Iop Publishing Ltd2017