Leptogenesis with virtual Majorana neutrinos

Abstract

We present a mechanism of leptogenesis based on the out-of-equilibrium decay of a scalar particle into heavy virtual Majorana neutrinos. This scheme presents many conceptual advantages over the conventional scenario of Fukugita and Yanagida. In particular, the standard techniques of quantum field theory can be used to compute the lepton asymmetry, without resorting to the phenomenological approximations usually made to describe unstable particles. This simplification allows us to address in a well-defined framework some issues raised in the recent literature. We also show, in a toy model, that a successful leptogenesis scenario is possible and requires a rather light scalar particle, $10^{6}GeV<m<10^{13}GeV$. A natural embedding of this scheme in a gauged unified theory encompassing the Majorana fermions seems however difficult.

23 pages, 9 figures, using Latex and epsfig

References in corpus (5)

• Neutrino Masses and Leptogenesis with Heavy Higgs Triplets
• Degenerate and Quasi Degenerate Majorana Neutrinos
• On the CP asymmetries in Majorana neutrino decays
• Further Considerations on the CP Asymmetry in Heavy Majorana Neutrino Decays
• Gauged $B-3L_{\tau }$ and Baryogenesis

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• Leptogenesis with Heavy Majorana Neutrinos Reexamined
• CP Asymmetries and Higher-Order Unitarity Relations
• Leptogenesis, neutrino masses and gauge unification
• Unstable Heavy Majorana Neutrinos and Leptogenesis
• How Neutrinos Get Mass and What Other Things May Happen Besides Oscillations
• Leptogenesis: a Link between the Matter-Antimatter Asymmetry and Neutrino Physics