Generating the observed baryon asymmetry from the inflaton field
Name
Hertzberg-2014-Generating the observed baryon.pdf
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Author(s)
Karouby, Johanna
Hertzberg, Mark Peter
Date Issued
March 2014
Journal
Physical Review D
Publisher
American Physical Society
Citation
Hertzberg, Mark P., and Johanna Karouby. “Generating the Observed Baryon Asymmetry from the Inflaton Field.” Phys. Rev. D 89, no. 6 (March 2014). © 2014 American Physical Society
Version
Final published version
Abstract
We propose a mechanism by which the inflaton can generate baryogenesis, by taking the inflaton to be a complex scalar field with a weakly broken global symmetry, and present a new version of the Affleck–Dine mechanism. The smallness of the breaking is motivated both by technical naturalness and a requirement for inflation. We study inflation driven by a quadratic potential for simplicity and discuss generalizations to other potentials. We compute the inflationary dynamics and find that a conserved particle number is obtained toward the end of inflation. We then explain in detail the later decay to baryons. We present two promising embeddings in particle physics. (i) The first is using high-dimension operators for a gauge singlet; we find this leads to the observed asymmetry for decay controlled by the ∼grand unified theory scale, and this is precisely the regime where the effective field theory applies. (ii) The second is using a colored inflaton, which requires small couplings. We also point out two observational consequences: a possible large-scale dipole in the baryon density and a striking prediction of isocurvature fluctuations for which the amplitude is found to be just below current limits and potentially detectable in future data.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Center for Theoretical Physics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
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Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.89.063523
