Reconciling resonant leptogenesis and baryogenesis via neutrino oscillations

Abstract

Right-handed neutrinos offer an elegant solution to two well-established phenomena beyond the Standard Model (SM) - masses and oscillations of neutrinos, as well as the baryon asymmetry of the Universe. It is also a minimalistic solution, since it requires only singlet Majorana fermions to be added to the SM particle content. If these fermions are nearly degenerate, the mass scale of right-handed neutrinos can be very low and accessible by the present and planned experiments. There are at least two well-studied mechanisms of low-scale leptogenesis: baryogenesis via oscillations and resonant leptogenesis. These two mechanisms were often considered separate, but they can, in fact, be understood as two different regimes of one and the same mechanism, described by a unique set of quantum kinetic equations. In this work, we show, using a unified description based on quantum kinetic equations, that the parameter spaces of these two regimes of low-scale leptogenesis significantly overlap. We present a comprehensive study of the parameter space of low-scale leptogenesis with the mass scale ranging from 0.1 to ∼106 GeV. The unified perspective of this work reveals the synergy between intensity and energy frontiers in the quest for heavy Majorana neutrinos.