Status of rates and rate equations for thermal leptogenesis

Biondini, S., Bödeker, D., Brambilla, N., Garny, M., Ghiglieri, J., Hohenegger, A., Laine, M., Mendizabal, S., Millington, P., Salvio, A. and Vairo, A. (2018) Status of rates and rate equations for thermal leptogenesis. International Journal of Modern Physics A, 33 (05n06). p. 1842004. ISSN 0217-751X

[img]
Preview
PDF - Requires a PDF viewer such as GSview, Xpdf or Adobe Acrobat Reader
Download (822kB) | Preview

Abstract

In many realizations of leptogenesis, heavy right-handed neutrinos play the main role in the generation of an imbalance between matter and antimatter in the early Universe. Hence, it is relevant to address quantitatively their dynamics in a hot and dense environment by taking into account the various thermal aspects of the problem at hand. The strong washout regime offers an interesting framework to carry out calculations systematically and reduce theoretical uncertainties. Indeed, any matter-antimatter asymmetry generated when the temperature of the hot plasma T exceeds the right-handed neutrino mass scale M is efficiently erased, and one can focus on the temperature window T _ M. We review recent progresses in the thermal field theoretic derivation of the key ingredients for the leptogenesis mechanism: the right-handed neutrino production rate, the CP asymmetry in the heavy-neutrino decays and the washout rates. The derivation of evolution equations for the heavy-neutrino and lepton-asymmetry number densities, their rigorous formulation and applicability are also discussed.

Item Type: Article
Schools/Departments: University of Nottingham, UK > Faculty of Science > School of Physics and Astronomy
Identification Number: https://doi.org/10.1142/S0217751X18420046
Depositing User: Eprints, Support
Date Deposited: 16 Mar 2018 14:24
Last Modified: 28 Feb 2019 04:30
URI: https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/id/eprint/50481

Actions (Archive Staff Only)

Edit View Edit View