Leptogenesis via collisions: leaking lepton number to the hidden sector

Phys Rev Lett. 2001 Dec 3;87(23):231304. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.87.231304. Epub 2001 Nov 15.

Abstract

We propose a leptobaryogenesis mechanism in which the nonzero B-L of the Universe is produced in out-of-equilibrium, lepton number and CP-violating scattering processes that convert ordinary particles into particles of some hidden sector. In particular, we consider the processes l phi-->l(')phi('),l macro(')phi(') mediated by the heavy Majorana neutrinos N of the seesaw mechanism, where l and phi are ordinary lepton and Higgs doublets and l('), phi(') are their hidden counterparts. Such a leptogenesis mechanism is effective even if the reheat temperature is much smaller than the heavy neutrino masses. In particular, it can be as low as 10(9) GeV.