Effective neutrino number shift from keV-vacuum neutrinophilic 2HDM

Abstract

If the Dirac neutrino masses are generated by a new scalar doublet with a vacuum at keV order, there would be rare hope to probe the framework in low-energy flavor physics, such as the lepton-flavor violating processes. However, the predicted neutrino Yukawa couplings being around the order of electronic Yukawa can realize a purely thermal Dirac leptogenesis, and thus render a more direct link between the high- and the low-energy CP violation. Despite its inert property in the low-energy flavor processes, the keV-vacuum induced Dirac neutrino model can generate a significant shift of the effective neutrino number, which can in turn be probed by the big-bang nucleosynthesis and cosmic microwave background epochs. We show that such a keV-vacuum induced Dirac neutrino model is already constrained by the current observations and will be probed with forecast sensitivity, serving therefore as a complementary avenue to test the Dirac leptogenesis.