Primordial non-Gaussianity as a probe of seesaw and leptogenesis

Abstract

We present the possibility that the seesaw mechanism and nonthermal leptogenesis can be investigated via primordial non-Gaussianities in the context of a majoron curvaton model. Originating as a massless Nambu-Goldstone boson from the spontaneous breaking of the global baryon (B) minus lepton (L) number symmetry at a scale vB−L, majoron becomes massive when it couples to a new confining sector through anomaly. Acting as a curvaton, majoron produces the observed red-tilted curvature power spectrum without relying on any inflaton contribution, and its decay in the post-inflationary era gives rise to a nonthermal population of right-handed neutrinos that participate in leptogenesis. A distinctive feature of the mechanism is the generation of observable non-Gaussianity, in the parameter space where the red-tilted power spectrum and sufficient baryon asymmetry are produced. We find that the non-Gaussianity parameter fNL ≳ $$ \mathcal{O} $$ O (0.1) is produced for high-scale seesaw (vB−L at $$ \mathcal{O} $$ O (1014−17) GeV) and leptogenesis (M1 ≳ $$ \mathcal{O} $$ O (106) GeV) where the latter represents the lightest right-handed neutrino mass. While the current bounds on local non-Gaussianity excludes some part of parameter space, the rest can be fully probed by future experiments like CMB-S4, LSST, and 21 cm tomography.