Tomography of flavoured leptogenesis with primordial blue gravitational waves

TL;DR

This paper investigates how primordial blue gravitational waves can reveal details about early universe leptogenesis, especially the influence of right-handed neutrino masses and flavor regimes, with potential detection in current and future GW experiments.

Contribution

It demonstrates that spectral features of primordial blue GWs encode information about leptogenesis flavor regimes and neutrino mass scales, providing a novel observational probe.

Findings

BGWs with positive spectral index can be detected across multiple frequency bands.

Different leptogenesis flavor regimes leave distinct GW imprints in specific frequency ranges.

Current BBN and LIGO limits constrain leptogenesis parameters and neutrino mass scales.

Abstract

We explore a scenario where an early epoch of matter domination is driven by the mass scale $M_N$ of the right-handed neutrinos, which also characterizes the different flavour regimes of leptogenesis. Such a matter-domination epoch gives rise to peculiar spectral imprints on primordial Gravitational Waves (GWs) produced during inflation. We point out that the characteristic spectral features are detectable in multiple frequency bands with current and future GW experiments in case of Blue GWs (BGWs) described by a power-law with a positive spectral index $(n_T >0)$ and an amplitude compatible with Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) measurements at the CMB scale. We find that the three-flavour leptogenesis regime with $M_N \lesssim 10^9~{\rm GeV}$ imprints BGWs more prominently than the two-flavour and one-flavour regimes characterized by a higher right-handed neutrino mass scale. In particular, a two-flavour (three-flavour) leptogenesis regime is expected to leave distinct imprints in the mHz-Hz ($\mu$Hz-mHz) band. Moreover, we translate the current Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) and LIGO limits on the GW energy density into constraints on the flavour leptogenesis parameter space for different GW spectral indices $n_T$. We provide a rigorous statistical analysis of how the future GW detectors would be conjointly able to distinguish the flavour regimes. Interestingly, the scenario also offers unique GW signals testable in the next LIGO run with a correlated signature in the PTA frequency band with an amplitude comparable to the one expected from supermassive black holes.