Status of rates and rate equations for thermal leptogenesis

Biondini, Simone; Bödeker, D.; Brambilla, N.; Garny, M.; Ghiglieri, Jacopo; Hohenegger, A.; Laine, Mikko Sakari; Mendizabal, S.; Millington, P.; Salvio, A.; Vairo, A. (2018). Status of rates and rate equations for thermal leptogenesis. International journal of modern physics. A - particles and fields, gravitation, cosmology, 33(05n06), p. 1842004. World Scientific 10.1142/S0217751X18420046

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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 environ- ment 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 system- atically and reduce theoretical uncertainties. Indeed, any matter–antimatter asymmetry generated when the temperature of the hot plasma T exceeds the right-handed neu- trino mass scale M is efficiently erased, and one can focus on the temperature window T ≪ M. We review recent progress 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.

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