Unstable Heavy Majorana Neutrinos and Leptogenesis

Abstract

We propose a new mechanism producing a non-vanishing lepton number asymmetry, based on decays of heavy Majorana neutrinos. If they are produced out of equilibrium, as occurs in preheating scenario, and are superpositions of mass eigenstates rapidly decaying, their decay rates contains interference terms provided the mass differences $Δm$ are small compared to widths $Γ$. The resulting lepton asymmetry, which is the analogue of the time-integrated CP asymmetry in $B^0-\bar{B}^0$ system, is found to be proportional to $Δm/Γ$.