Baryogenesis via leptogenesis: Spontaneous B and L violation

Abstract

In order to address the baryon asymmetry in the Universe one needs to understand the origin of baryon and lepton number violation. In this article, we discuss the mechanism of baryogenesis via leptogenesis to explain the matter-antimatter asymmetry in theories with spontaneous breaking of baryon and lepton number. In this context, a lepton asymmetry is generated through the out-of-equilibrium decays of right-handed neutrinos at the high-scale, while local baryon number must be broken below the multi-TeV scale to satisfy the cosmological bounds on the dark matter relic density. We demonstrate how the lepton asymmetry generated via leptogenesis can be converted in two different ways: (a) in the theory predicting Majorana dark matter the lepton asymmetry is converted into a baryon asymmetry, and (b) in the theory with Dirac dark matter the decays of right-handed neutrinos can generate lepton and dark matter asymmetries that are then partially converted into a baryon asymmetry. Consequently, we show how to explain the matter-antimatter asymmetry, the dark matter relic density and neutrino masses in theories for local baryon and lepton number.