Inflationary gravitational wave spectral shapes as test for low-scale leptogenesis

Abstract

We study thermal and non-thermal resonant leptogenesis in a general setting where a heavy scalar ϕ decays to right-handed neutrinos (RHNs) whose further out-of-equilibrium decay generates the required lepton asymmetry. Domination of the energy budget of the Universe by the ϕ or the RHNs alters the evolution history of the primordial gravitational waves (PGW), of inflationary origin, which re-enter the horizon after inflation, modifying the spectral shape. The decays of ϕ and RHNs release entropy into the early Universe while nearly degenerate RHNs facilitate low and intermediate scale leptogenesis. We show that depending on the coupling yR of ϕ to radiation species, RHNs can achieve thermal abundance before decaying, which gives rise to thermal leptogenesis. A characteristic damping of the GW spectrum resulting in two knee-like features or one knee-like feature would provide evidence for low-scale thermal and non-thermal leptogenesis respectively. We explore the parameter space for the lightest right-handed neutrino mass M1∈[102,1014] GeV and washout parameter K that depends on the light-heavy neutrino Yukawa couplings λ, in the weak (K<1) and strong (K>1) washout regimes. The resulting novel features compatible with observed baryon asymmetry are detectable by future experiments like LISA and ET. By estimating signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for upcoming GW experiments, we investigate the effect of the scalar mass Mϕ and reheating temperature Tϕ, which depends on the ϕ−N Yukawa couplings yN.