We study the influence of lepton flavour asymmetries on the formation and the mass spectrum of primordial black holes. We estimate the detectability of their mergers with LIGO/Virgo and show that the currently published gravitational wave events may actually be described by a primordial black hole spectrum from non-zero asymmetries. We suggest to use gravitational-wave astronomy as a novel tool to probe how lepton flavour asymmetric the Universe has been before the onset of neutrino oscillations.
We study the impact of large lepton flavour asymmetries on the cosmic QCD transition. Scenarios of unequal lepton flavour asymmetries are observationally almost unconstrained and therefore open up a whole new parameter space for the cosmic QCD transition. We find that for large asymmetries the formation of a Bose-Einstein condensate of pions can occur and identify the corresponding parameter space. In the vicinity of the QCD transition scale, we express the pressure in terms of a Taylor expansion with respect to the complete set of chemical potentials. The Taylor coefficients rely on input fro…
The total lepton asymmetry $l=\sum_f l_f$ in our universe is only poorly constrained by theories and experiments. It might be orders of magnitudes larger than the observed baryon asymmetry $b\simeq {\cal O}(10^{-10})$, $|l|/b \leq {\cal O}(10^{9})$. We found that the dynamics of the cosmic QCD transition changes for large asymmetries. Predictions for asymmetries in a single flavour $l_f$ allow even larger values. We find that asymmetries of $l_f\leq {\cal O}(1)$ in a single or two flavours change the relic abundance of WIMPs. However, large lepton and large individual lepton flavour asymmetrie…
We perform a study of the flavour evolution in the early universe of a multi-flavour active-sterile neutrino system with parameters inspired by the short-baseline neutrino anomalies. In a neutrino-symmetric bath a "thermal" population of the sterile state would quickly grow, but in the presence of primordial neutrino asymmetries a self-suppression as well as a resonant sterile neutrino production can take place, depending on temperature and chosen parameters. In order to characterize these effects, we go beyond the usual average momentum and single mixing approximations and consider a multi-mo…
The lepton flavour asymmetries of the Universe are observationally almost unconstrained before the onset of neutrino oscillations. We calculate the cosmic trajectory during the cosmic QCD epoch in the presence of large lepton flavour asymmetries. By including QCD thermodynamic quantities derived from functional QCD methods in our calculation our work reveals for the first time the possibility of a first-order cosmic QCD transition. We specify the required values of the lepton flavour asymmetries for which a first-order transition occurs for a number of different benchmark scenarios.
We investigate how large lepton asymmetries affect the evolution of the early universe at times before big bang nucleosynthesis and in particular how they influence the relic density of WIMP dark matter. In comparison to the standard calculation of the relic WIMP abundance we find a decrease, depending on the lepton flavour asymmetry. We find an effect of up to 20 per cent for lepton flavour asymmetries $l_f= {\cal O}(0.1)$.
The hypermagnetic helicity density at the electroweak phase transition (EWPT) exceeds many orders of magnitude the galactic magnetic helicity density. Together with previous magnetic helicity evolution calculations after the EWPT and hypermagnetic helicity conversion to the magnetic one at the EWPT, the present calculation completes the description of the evolution of this important topological feature of cosmological magnetic fields. It suggests that if the magnetic field seeding the galactic dynamo has a primordial origin, it should be substantially helical. This should be taken into account…
The early universe could feature multiple reheating events, leading to jumps in the visible sector entropy density that dilute both particle asymmetries and the number density of frozen-out states. In fact, late time entropy jumps are usually required in models of Affleck-Dine baryogenesis, which typically produces an initial particle-antiparticle asymmetry that is much too large. An important consequence of late time dilution, is that a smaller dark matter annihilation cross section is needed to obtain the observed dark matter relic density. For cosmologies with high scale baryogenesis, follo…
Primordial Asymmetries, Primordial Equation of State & Primordial Black Holes
Deutsches Zentrum für Astrophysik (DZA)（德国天体物理中心）；Institut für Kern- und Teilchenphysik (IKTP), TU Dresden（德累斯顿工业大学核与粒子物理研究所）；Institut de Física Corpuscular (IFIC), CSIC-Universitat de València（瓦伦西亚大学-CSIC粒子物理研究所）；Asia Pacific Center for Theoretical Physics（亚太理论物理中心）；Department of Physics, Pohang University of Science and Technology（浦项科技大学物理系）；Department of Physics, Nagoya University（名古屋大学物理系）；Department of Physics, University of Miami（迈阿密大学物理系）；Fakultät für Physik, Technische Universität Dortmund（多特蒙德工业大学物理学院）；Arnold Sommerfeld Center, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität（路德维希-马克西米利安大学阿诺德·索末菲尔德中心）
We revisit the decoupling of neutrinos in the early universe with flavour oscillations. We rederive the quantum kinetic equations which determine the neutrino evolution based on a BBGKY-like hierarchy, and include for the first time the full collision term, with both on- and off-diagonal terms for all relevant reactions. We focus on the case of zero chemical potential and solve these equations numerically. We also develop an approximate scheme based on the adiabatic evolution in the matter basis. In fact, the large difference between the oscillations and cosmological time scales allows to cons…
Using a new sample of extremely metal poor systems, the EMPRESS survey has recently reported a primordial helium abundance that is $3σ$ smaller than the prediction from the standard big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) scenario. This measurement could be interpreted as a hint for a primordial lepton asymmetry in the electron neutrino flavor. Motivated by the EMPRESS results, we present a comprehensive analysis of the lepton asymmetry using measurements of the abundances of primordial elements, along with cosmic microwave background (CMB) data from Planck. Assuming that there is no dark radiation in …
A poorly constrained parameter in the Standard Model of Cosmology is the lepton asymmetry l = \sum_f l_f=\sum_f(n_f+n_{ν_f})/s. Each flavour asymmetry l_f with f=e, μ, τ is the sum of the net particle density of the charged leptons n_f and their corresponding neutrinos, normalized with the entropy density s. Constraints on l_f \leq O(0.1) from BBN and CMB allow for lepton flavour asymmetries orders of magnitudes larger then the baryon asymmetry b ~ 10^{-10}. In this article we show how such large lepton (flavour) asymmetries influence the early universe, in particular the freeze out of WIMPs a…
We investigate the possible formation of a Bose-Einstein condensed phase of pions in the early Universe at nonvanishing values of lepton flavor asymmetries. A hadron resonance gas model with pion interactions, based on first-principle lattice QCD simulations at nonzero isospin density, is used to evaluate cosmic trajectories at various values of electron, muon, and tau lepton asymmetries that satisfy the available constraints on the total lepton asymmetry. The cosmic trajectory can pass through the pion condensed phase if the combined electron and muon asymmetry is sufficiently large: $|l_e + …
Mixing lepton doublets of the Standard Model can lead to lepton flavour asymmetries in the Early Universe. We present a diagrammatic representation of this recently identified source of $CP$ violation and elaborate in detail on the correlations between the lepton flavours at different temperatures. For a model where two sterile right-handed neutrinos generate the light neutrino masses through the see-saw mechanism, the lower bound on reheat temperatures in accordance with the observed baryon asymmetry turns out to be $\gsim 1.2\times 10^9\,{\rm GeV}$. With three right-handed neutrinos, substan…
A cosmic lepton asymmetry $η_{\text{l}}=(n_{\text{l}}-n_{\bar{\text{l}}})/n_γ$ affects the primordial helium abundance and the expansion rate of the early Universe. Both of these effects have an impact on the anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). We derive constraints on the neutrino chemical potentials from the Planck 2015 data, assuming equal lepton flavour asymmetries and negligible neutrino masses. We find $ξ=-0.002 ^{+0.114}_{-0.111}$ (95\% CL) for the chemical potentials, which corresponds to $ -0.085 \leq η_{\text{l}} \leq 0.084$. Our constraints on the lepton asymmetry…
We derive novel limits on the masses of the light and heavy Majorana neutrinos by requiring successful leptogenesis in seesaw models of minimal flavour violation (MFV). Taking properly into account radiative flavour effects and avoiding the limitations due to a no-go theorem on leptonic asymmetries, we find that the mass of the lightest of the observable neutrinos must be smaller than $\sim 0.05$ eV, whilst the Majorana scale of lepton number violation should be higher than $\sim 10^{12}$ GeV. The latter lower bound enables one to probe the existence of possible new scales of MFV, up to energi…
