Baryogenesis through lepton number
violation
1
Utpal Sarkary
yPhysical Research Lab oratory, Ahmedabad - 380 009, INDIA
Abstract.
The most promising scenarios of baryogenesis seems to b e the
one through lepton numb er violation. Lepton numb er violation
through a Ma jarana mass of the right-handed neutrinos can
generate a lepton asymmetry of the universe when the right-
handed neutrinos decay. The left-handed neutrinos get small
Ma jorana masses through see-saw mechanism in these mo dels.
A triplet higgs scalar violating lepton numb er explicitly through
its couplings to two leptons or two higgs doublets can also nat-
urally give small Ma jorana masses to the left-handed neutrinos
and also generate a lepton asymmetry of the universe. We re-
view b oth these mo dels of leptogenesis, where the lepton number
asymmetry then gets converted to a baryon asymmetry of the
universe b efore the electroweak phase transition.
1. Intro duction
To get the baryon asymmetry of the universe [1] starting from a symmetric
universe, one requires [2] three conditions (A) Baryon number violation, (B)
C and CP violation, and (C) Departurefrom thermal equilibrium. In grand
uni ed theories (GUTs) all these conditions are satis ed [3, 4], but the
generated asymmetry conserves (B L). It was then realised that the chiral
nature of the weak interaction also breaks the global baryon and lepton
numb ers in the standard mo del [5]. At nite temp erature these baryon
and lepton numb er violating interactions were found to b e very strong in
1
E-mail:[email protected] 1
the presence of some static top ological eld con guration - sphalerons [6].
Although the anomalous sphaleron pro cesses conserves (B L), the GUT
(B + L) asymmetry will b e completely washed out by these interactions.
Attempts were then made to make use of the baryon numb er violation of
the standard mo del to generate a baryon asymmetry of the universe. How-
ever, in these mo dels one needs to protect the generated baryon asymmetry
after the phase transition, which requires the mass of the standard mo del
doublet higgs b oson to be lighter than the present exp erimental limit of
95 GeV. Then the most interesting scenario remains for the understanding
of the baryon numb er of the universe is through lepton numb er violation
[7]{[14], which is also referred to as leptogenesis.
In mo dels of leptogenesis one generates a lepton asymmetry of the uni-
verse, which is the same as the (B L) asymmetry of the universe at
some high energy. This (B L) asymmetry of the universe then get con-
verted to the baryon asymmetry of the universe during the p erio d when the
sphaleron elds maintain the baryon numb er violating interactions in equi-
librium. Since lepton numb er violation is the source of leptogenesis, they
are related to mo dels of neutrino masses. In this article we shall review
two scenarios of leptogenesis. In the rst scenario right handed neutrinos
are intro duced, which gets a Ma jorana mass and breaks lepton number
[7]. The left-handed neutrinos get small Ma jorana masses through see-saw
mechanism [15]. In the second scenario only a triplet higgs is intro duced
and the fermion content of the standard mo del is unaltered [16, 17, 18].
Unlike earlier treatments, lepton number is now broken explicitly at a very
high scale [16,17]. Although the triplet is very heavy, its vev b ecomes of
the order of eV to givevery small Ma jorana mass to the neutrinos natu-
rally [16]. Decays of the triplet higgs generate a lepton asymmetry of the
universe at very high scale.
In the next section we shall discuss the electroweak anomalous pro cesses
and then how the baryon and lepton numb ers of the universe gets related
to the (B L)numb er of the universe. This will imply that if there is vary
fast lepton numb er violation in the universe during the p erio d when these
pro cesses are in equilibrium, that can also wash out the baryon asymmetry
of the universe [19,20]. In the following two sections we present the two
scenarios of leptogenesis.
2. Sphaleron pro cesses in thermal equilibrium and relation be-
tween baryon and lepton numb ers
Anomaly breaks any classical symmetry of the lagrangian at the quantum
level. So, all lo cal gauge theories should be free of anomalies. However,
there may be anomalies corresp onding to any global current. That will 2
simply mean that such global symmetries of the classical lagrangian are
broken through quantum e ects.
In the standard mo del the chiral nature of the weak interaction makes
the baryon and lepton numb er anomalous and give us non vanishing axial
current [5]
2 1
5
~ ~
Y ] j =6[ W W + Y
a
a
(B +L)
8 8
which will break the (B + L) symmetry, while still preserving (B L),
during the electroweak phase transition,
Z
2
4
~
(B + L)=2N d xW W =2N
g a g
a
8
But their rate is very small at zero temp erature, since they are suppressed
2
by quantum tunnelling probability, exp[ ]; where is the Chern-
2
Simmons numb er.
At nite temp erature, however, it has b een shown that there exists non-
trivial static top ological soliton con guration, called the sphalerons, which
enhances the baryon numb er violating transition rate [6] and the suppres-
V
0
sion factor is now replaced by the Boltzmann factor exp[ ] where the
T
p otential or the free energy V is related to the mass of the sphaleron eld,
0
which is ab out TeV. As a result, at temp eratures b etween
12 2
10 GeV >T >10 GeV (1)
the sphaleron mediated baryon and lepton numb er violating pro cesses are
in equilibrium. For the simplest scenario of = 1, the sphaleron induced
pro cesses are B =L= 3, given by,