Affleck-Dine Leptogenesis from Higgs Inflation

Area of Science:

• Particle Physics
• Cosmology
• Astroparticle Physics

Background:

• The origin of neutrino masses remains unexplained.
• The observed matter-antimatter asymmetry (baryon asymmetry) is a major cosmological puzzle.
• Cosmic inflation is a leading theory for the early universe, but its underlying mechanism is unknown.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the role of the triplet Higgs in the type-II seesaw mechanism.
• To explore if this mechanism can simultaneously address neutrino masses, baryon asymmetry, and inflation.
• To determine the viable parameter space and phenomenological predictions of this model.

Main Methods:

• Surveying the allowed parameter space for the triplet Higgs model.
• Analyzing decay channels, particularly dominant leptonic decays.
• Considering triplet masses and vacuum expectation values.

Main Results:

• The triplet Higgs mechanism can simultaneously generate neutrino masses and baryon asymmetry, and play a role in inflation.
• Viable parameter space exists for triplet masses as low as a TeV.
• A small vacuum expectation value for the triplet (v_{Δ}<10 keV) is preferred, requiring dominant leptonic decays.

Conclusions:

• The type-II seesaw mechanism with a triplet Higgs offers a unified solution to three major unsolved problems in physics.
• The model predicts unique phenomenological signatures testable at future 100 TeV colliders.
• Upcoming lepton flavor violation experiments (e.g., Mu3e) and neutrinoless double beta decay searches will probe this framework.