paper

A thermal neutrino interaction rate at NLO

arXiv:1910.12880 · doi:10.1016/j.nuclphysb.2019.114870

Abstract

The interaction rate of an ultrarelativistic active neutrino at a temperature below the electroweak crossover plays a role in leptogenesis scenarios based on oscillations between active neutrinos and GeV-scale sterile neutrinos. By making use of a Euclideanization property of a thermal light-cone correlator, we determine the $O (g)$ correction to such an interaction rate in the high-temperature limit $I ¨ T ≫ m_{W}$ , finding a $\sim 15...40%$ reduction. For a benchmark point, this NLO correction decreases the lepton asymmetries produced by $\sim 1%$ .

24 pages