Strong Washout Approximation to Resonant Leptogenesis

Abstract

We show that the effective decay asymmetry for resonant Leptogenesis in the strong washout regime with two sterile neutrinos and a single active flavour can in wide regions of parameter space be approximated by its late-time limit $\varepsilon=X\sin(2\varphi)/(X^2+\sin^2\varphi)$, where $X=8\pi\Delta/(|Y_1|^2+|Y_2|^2)$, $\Delta=4(M_1-M_2)/(M_1+M_2)$, $\varphi=\arg(Y_2/Y_1)$, and $M_{1,2}$, $Y_{1,2}$ are the masses and Yukawa couplings of the sterile neutrinos. This approximation in particular extends to parametric regions where $|Y_{1,2}|^2\gg \Delta$, {\it i.e.} where the width dominates the mass splitting. We generalise the formula for the effective decay asymmetry to the case of several flavours of active leptons and demonstrate how this quantity can be used to calculate the lepton asymmetry for phenomenological scenarios that are in agreement with the observed neutrino oscillations. We establish analytic criteria for the validity of the late-time approximation for the decay asymmetry and compare these with numerical results that are obtained by solving for the mixing and the oscillations of the sterile neutrinos. For phenomenologically viable models with two sterile neutrinos, we find that the flavoured effective late-time decay asymmetry can be applied throughout parameter space.