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Thermal leptogenesis, dark matter, and gravitational waves from an extended canonical seesaw scenario

Partha Kumar Paul1,*, Narendra Sahu1,†, and Prashant Shukla2,3,‡

  • *Contact author: ph22resch11012@iith.ac.in
  • †Contact author: nsahu@phy.iith.ac.in
  • ‡Contact author: pshukla@barc.gov.in
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Phys. Rev. D 112, 015032 – Published 31 July, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/w8gl-wbjd

Abstract

In a canonical type-I seesaw scenario, the Standard Model is extended with three singlet right-handed neutrinos (RHNs) Ni,i=1, 2, 3 with masses Mi,i=1, 2, 3 to simultaneously explain sub-eV masses of light neutrinos and baryon asymmetry of the Universe at high scales. In this paper, we show that a relatively low-scale thermal leptogenesis accompanied by gravitational wave signatures is possible when the type-I seesaw is extended with a singlet fermion (S) and a singlet scalar (ρ), where S and ρ are odd under a discrete Z2 symmetry. We also add a vectorlike fermion doublet Ψ and impose a Z2′ symmetry under which both N1 and Ψ are odd while all other particles are even. This gives rise to a singlet-doublet Majorana fermion dark matter in our setup. At a high scale, the Z2 symmetry is broken spontaneously by the vacuum expectation value of ρ and leads to (i) mixing between RHNs (N2, N3) and S and (ii) formation of Domain walls (DWs). In the former case, the final lepton asymmetry is generated by the out-of-equilibrium decay of S, which dominantly mixes with N2. We show that the scale of thermal leptogenesis can be lowered to MS∼2×106  GeV, which is 3 orders of magnitude lower than the thermal leptogenesis in canonical type-I seesaw. In the latter case, the disappearance of the DWs gives observable gravitational wave signatures, which can be probed at LISA, DECIGO, μARES etc.

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Phys. Rev. D 112, 015032– Published 31 July, 2025
  • Received 23 September 2024
  • Accepted 4 July 2025
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