Effective field theories: from Cosmology to Quark Gluon Plasma

TL;DR

This paper develops an effective field theory approach for non-relativistic Majorana neutrinos in thermal media, linking cosmological baryogenesis mechanisms with techniques from collider physics and heavy-ion collisions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel EFT framework for non-relativistic Majorana particles at finite temperature, applicable to leptogenesis and related phenomena.

Findings

EFT for Majorana neutrinos in hot plasma developed

Application to neutrino decay in dense Standard Model environment

Analogies drawn between neutrinos and heavy quark bound states in medium

Abstract

Cosmology and particle physics come across a tight connection in the attempt to reproduce and understand quantitatively the results of experimental findings. Indeed, the quark gluon plasma (QGP) found at colliders and the baryon asymmetry provided by the WMAP collaboration are examples where to apply field theoretical techniques in issues relevant for Cosmology. In the simplest leptogenesis framework, heavy Majorana neutrinos are at the origin of the baryon asymmetry. The non-relativistic regime appears to be relevant during the lepton asymmetry generation where the interactions among particles occur in a thermal medium. We discuss the development of an effective field theory (EFT) for non-relativistic Majorana particles to address calculations at finite temperature. We show an application of such a method to the case of a heavy Majorana neutrino decaying in a hot and dense plasma of Standard Model (SM) particles. These techniques are analogous to those widely used for the investigation of heavy-ion collisions at colliders by exploiting hard probes. Finally we sketch some commonalities between Majorana neutrinos and bound state of heavy quarks in medium.