Neutrinoful Universe

TL;DR

This paper proposes a unified model where neutrino mass generation also explains inflation, baryogenesis, and dark matter, predicting PeV-scale dark matter and linking it to IceCube high-energy neutrino observations.

Contribution

It introduces a minimal model connecting neutrino masses, inflation, baryogenesis, and dark matter within a single framework, with testable predictions.

Findings

Dark matter mass predicted to be around PeV scale.

Decay of PeV neutrinos can account for IceCube neutrino flux.

Model parameters constrained by CMB data from BICEP2 and Planck.

Abstract

The Standard Model of particle physics fails to explain the important pieces in the standard cosmology, such as inflation, baryogenesis, and dark matter of the Universe. We consider the possibility that the sector to generate small neutrino masses is responsible for all of them; the inflation is driven by the Higgs field to break $B-L$ gauge symmetry which provides the Majorana masses to the right-handed neutrinos, and the reheating process by the decay of the $B-L$ Higgs boson supplies the second lightest right-handed neutrinos whose CP violating decays produce $B-L$ asymmetry, a la, leptogenesis. The lightest right-handed neutrinos are also produced by the reheating process, and remain today as the dark matter of the Universe. In the minimal model of the inflaton potential, one can set the parameter of the potential by the data from CMB observations including the BICEP2 and the Planck experiments. In such a scenario, the mass of the dark matter particle is predicted to be of the order of PeV. We find that the decay of the PeV right-handed neutrinos can explain the high-energy neutrino flux observed at the IceCube experiments if the lifetime is of the order of $10^{28}$ s.