8 research outputs found
Leptogenesis for Pedestrians
During the process of thermal leptogenesis temperature decreases by about one
order of magnitude while the baryon asymmetry is generated. We present an
analytical description of this process so that the dependence on the neutrino
mass parameters becomes transparent. In the case of maximal CP asymmetry all
decay and scattering rates in the plasma are determined by the mass M_1 of the
decaying heavy Majorana neutrino, the effective light neutrino mass tilde{m}_1
and the absolute mass scale bar{m} of the light neutrinos. In the mass range
suggested by neutrino oscillations, m_{sol} \simeq 8*10^{-3} eV \lesssim
\tilde{m}_1 \lesssim m_{atm} \simeq 5*10^{-2} eV, leptogenesis is dominated
just by decays and inverse decays. The effect of all other scattering processes
lies within the theoretical uncertainty of present calculations. The final
baryon asymmetry is dominantly produced at a temperature T_B which can be about
one order of magnitude below the heavy neutrino mass M_1. We also derive an
analytical expression for the upper bound on the light neutrino masses implied
by successful leptogenesis.Comment: 55 pages, 14 figures include
A bound on neutrino masses from baryogenesis
Properties of neutrinos, the lightest of all elementary particles, may be the
origin of the entire matter-antimatter asymmetry of the universe. This requires
that neutrinos are Majorana particles, which are equal to their antiparticles,
and that their masses are sufficiently small. Leptogenesis, the theory
explaining the cosmic matter-antimatter asymmetry, predicts that all neutrino
masses are smaller than 0.2 eV, which will be tested by forthcoming laboratory
experiments and by cosmology.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figure
Axino dark matter from thermal production
The axino is a promising candidate for dark matter in the Universe. It is
electrically and color neutral, very weakly interacting, and could be - as
assumed in this study - the lightest supersymmetric particle, which is stable
for unbroken R-parity. In supersymmetric extensions of the standard model, in
which the strong CP problem is solved via the Peccei-Quinn mechanism, the axino
arises naturally as the fermionic superpartner of the axion. We compute the
thermal production rate of axinos in supersymmetric QCD. Using hard thermal
loop resummation, we obtain a finite result in a gauge-invariant way, which
takes into account Debye screening in the hot quark-gluon-squark-gluino plasma.
The relic axino abundance from thermal scatterings after inflation is
evaluated. We find that thermally produced axinos could provide the dominant
part of cold dark matter, for example, for an axino mass of 100 keV and a
reheating temperature of 10^6 GeV.Comment: 33 pages, 7 figures, 1 table, erratum adde
Leptonic CP Violation and Neutrino Mass Models
We discuss leptonic mixing and CP violation at low and high energies,
emphasizing possible connections between leptogenesis and CP violation at low
energies, in the context of lepton flavour models. Furthermore we analyse weak
basis invariants relevant for leptogenesis and for CP violation at low
energies. These invariants have the advantage of providing a simple test of the
CP properties of any lepton flavour model.Comment: 26 pages, no figures, submitted to the Focus Issue on `Neutrino
Physics` edited by F. Halzen, M. Lindner and A. Suzuki, to be published in
New Journal of Physic