Baryogenesis from Mixing of Lepton Doublets

It is shown that the mixing of lepton doublets of the Standard Model can yield sizeable contributions to the lepton asymmetry, that is generated through the decays of right-handed neutrinos at finite temperature in the early Universe. When calculating the flavour-mixing correlations, we account for the effects of Yukawa as well as of gauge interactions. We compare the freeze-out asymmetry from lepton-doublet mixing to the standard contributions from the mixing and direct decays of right-handed neutrinos. The asymmetry from lepton mixing is considerably large when the mass ratio between the right-handed neutrinos is of order of a few, while it becomes Maxwell-suppressed for larger hierarchies. For an intermediate range between the case of degenerate right-handed neutrinos (resonant Leptogenesis) and the hierarchical case, lepton mixing can yield the main contribution to the lepton asymmetry.Comment: 25 page

Spectator Effects during Leptogenesis in the Strong Washout Regime

By including spectator fields into the Boltzmann equations for Leptogenesis, we show that partially equilibrated spectator interactions can have a significant impact on the freeze-out value of the asymmetry in the strong washout regime. The final asymmetry is typically increased, since partially equilibrated spectators "hide" a part of the asymmetry from washout. We study examples with leptonic and non-leptonic spectator processes, assuming thermal initial conditions, and find up to 50% enhanced asymmetries compared to the limit of fully equilibrated spectators. Together with a comprehensive overview of the equilibration temperatures for various Standard Model processes, the numerical results indicate the ranges when the limiting cases of either fully equilibrated or negligible spectator fields are applicable and when they are not. Our findings also indicate an increased sensitivity to initial conditions and finite density corrections even in the strong washout regime.Comment: 23 pages, 4 figure

Phenomenology of Baryogenesis from Lepton-Doublet Mixing

Mixing lepton doublets of the Standard Model can lead to lepton flavour asymmetries in the Early Universe. We present a diagrammatic representation of this recently identified source of $CP$ violation and elaborate in detail on the correlations between the lepton flavours at different temperatures. For a model where two sterile right-handed neutrinos generate the light neutrino masses through the see-saw mechanism, the lower bound on reheat temperatures in accordance with the observed baryon asymmetry turns out to be \gsim 1.2\times 10^9\,{\rm GeV}. With three right-handed neutrinos, substantially smaller values are viable. This requires however a tuning of the Yukawa couplings, such that there are cancellations between the individual contributions to the masses of the light neutrinos.Comment: 28 page

Perturbative and Nonperturbative Contributions to a Simple Model for Baryogenesis

Single field baryogenesis, a scenario for Dirac leptogenesis sourced by a time-dependent scalar condensate, is studied. We compare the creation of the charge asymmetry by the perturbative decay of the condensate with the nonperturbative decay, a process of particle production commonly known in the context of inflation as preheating. The nonperturbative channel dominates when the coupling of the scalar field to leptons is sufficiently large.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figure

Combining Experimental and Cosmological Constraints on Heavy Neutrinos

We study experimental and cosmological constraints on the extension of the Standard Model by three right handed neutrinos with masses between those of the pion and W boson. We combine for the first time direct, indirect and cosmological constraints in this mass range. This includes experimental constraints from neutrino oscillation data, neutrinoless double $\beta$ decay, electroweak precision data, lepton universality, searches for rare lepton decays, tests of CKM unitarity and past direct searches at colliders or fixed target experiments. On the cosmological side, big bang nucleosynthesis has the most pronounced impact. Our results can be used to evaluate the discovery potential of searches for heavy neutrinos at LHCb, BELLE II, SHiP, ATLAS, CMS or a future lepton collider.Comment: 64 pages, 22 figures. Matches published versio

Green's function method for handling radiative effects on false vacuum decay

We introduce a Green's function method for handling radiative effects on false vacuum decay. In addition to the usual thin-wall approximation, we achieve further simplification by treating the bubble wall in the planar limit. As an application, we take the $\lambda\phi^4$ theory, extended with $N$ additional heavier scalars, wherein we calculate analytically both the functional determinant of the quadratic fluctuations about the classical soliton configuration and the first correction to the soliton configuration itself.Comment: 19 pages, 5 figures, revtex format; references extended, Section III A and Appendix C corrected and further clarifications added; version accepted for publication Physical Review

Slow Roll during the Waterfall Regime: The Small Coupling Window for SUSY Hybrid Inflation

It has recently been pointed out that a substantial amount of e-folds can occur during the waterfall regime of hybrid inflation. Moreover, Kodama et.al. have derived analytic approximations for the trajectories of the inflaton and of the waterfall fields. Based on these, we derive here the consequences for F- and D-term SUSY hybrid inflation: A substantial amount of e-folds may occur in the waterfall regime, provided kappa << M^2/M_P^2, where kappa is the superpotential coupling, M the scale of symmetry breaking and M_P the reduced Planck mass. When this condition is amply fulfilled, a number of e-folds much larger than N_e\approx60 can occur in the waterfall regime and the scalar spectral index is then given by the expression found by Kodama et.al. n_s=1-4/N_e. This value may be increased up to unity, if only about N_e e-folds occur during the waterfall regime, such that the largest observable scale leaves the horizon close to the critical point of hybrid inflation, what can be achieved for kappa\approx10^(-13) and M\approx5x10^(12) GeV in F-term inflation. Imposing the normalization of the power spectrum leads to a lower bound on the scale of symmetry breaking.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures, minor corrections, references added, accepted for publication in Phys.Rev.

F_D-Term Hybrid Inflation with Electroweak-Scale Lepton Number Violation

We study F-term hybrid inflation in a novel supersymmetric extension of the SM with a subdominant Fayet-Iliopoulos D-term. We call this particular form of inflation, in short, F_D-term hybrid inflation. The proposed model ties the mu-parameter of the MSSM to an SO(3)-symmetric Majorana mass m_N, through the vacuum expectation value of the inflaton field. The late decays of the ultraheavy particles associated with the extra U(1) gauge group, which are abundantly produced during the preheating epoch, could lower the reheat temperature even up to 1 TeV, thereby avoiding the gravitino overproduction problem. The baryon asymmetry in the Universe can be explained by thermal electroweak-scale resonant leptogenesis, in a way independent of any pre-existing lepton- or baryon-number abundance. Further cosmological and particle-physics implications of the F_D-term hybrid model are briefly discussed.Comment: 20 pages, 1 eps figure, comments added to conclusion