Bremsstrahlung High-frequency Gravitational Wave Signatures of High-scale Non-thermal Leptogenesis

TL;DR

This paper proposes that graviton bremsstrahlung during inflaton decay in non-thermal leptogenesis can produce a detectable high-frequency gravitational wave background, linking neutrino physics with gravitational wave observations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel mechanism where graviton bremsstrahlung from inflaton decay serves as a probe for non-thermal leptogenesis and predicts a high-frequency gravitational wave signature.

Findings

Graviton bremsstrahlung produces a high-frequency stochastic gravitational wave background.

The mechanism sets a lower frequency bound around 10^{11} Hz.

Predicted gravitational waves could contribute to dark radiation detectable by future experiments.

Abstract

Inflaton seeds non-thermal leptogenesis by pair producing right-handed neutrinos in the seesaw model. We show that the inevitable graviton bremsstrahlung associated with inflaton decay can be a unique probe of non-thermal leptogenesis. The emitted gravitons contribute to a high-frequency stochastic gravitational waves background with a characteristic fall-off below the peak frequency. Besides leading to a lower bound on the frequency ($f\gtrsim 10^{11}$ Hz), the seesaw-perturbativity condition makes the mechanism sensitive to the lightest neutrino mass. For an inflaton mass close to the Planck scale, the gravitational waves contribute to sizeable dark radiation, which is within the projected sensitivity limits of future experiments such as CMB-S4 and CMB-HD.