Leptogenesis with a GeV-Scale Quasi-Dirac Neutrino

arXiv:2610.20729 · hep-ph, astro-ph.CO · Submitted 2026-10-14 · Read on arXiv

hep-ph, astro-ph.CO

Submitted: 2026-10-14

Updated: 2026-10-14

Comments: 14 pages, 10 figures, and 1 table. Comments are welcome

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The gist: We discuss leptogenesis in a model with a GeV-scale quasi-Dirac neutral lepton, comprising mainly sterile states, which is accessible to future experiments.

Terminology

Abstract

We discuss leptogenesis in a model with a GeV-scale quasi-Dirac neutral lepton, comprising mainly sterile states, which is accessible to future experiments. In particular, we show that Higgs-decay leptogenesis can naturally arise from the type-I seesaw mechanism with spontaneously broken global lepton number together with a discrete Z 2 symmetry, yielding two quasi-degenerate right-handed neutrinos (RHNs) which, to excellent approximation, form a single Dirac neutrino, with a tiny mass splitting as required for resonant enhancement generated by higher-dimensional lepton-number-violating operators. Incorporating finite-temperature effects, we show that the observed baryon asymmetry can be successfully generated through thermal Higgs decays for 0.1-10 GeV mass quasi-Dirac neutrinos, with the CP asymmetry arising from the interplay between the vacuum and thermal contributions to the mass splitting. In the parameter region of successful leptogenesis, the quasi-Dirac neutrino is accessible to future heavy neutral lepton searches at SHiP, MATHUSLA and FCC-ee. In addition, the same symmetry-breaking sector gives rise to unstable domain walls whose annihilation can generate a stochastic gravitational-wave background, providing a complementary probe of the framework.

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