Inflationary Gravitational Waves and Laboratory Searches as Complementary Probes of Right-handed Neutrinos
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2025
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| author | Borboruah, Zafri A. Deppisch, Frank F. Ghoshal, Anish Malhotra, Lekhika |
| author_facet | Borboruah, Zafri A. Deppisch, Frank F. Ghoshal, Anish Malhotra, Lekhika |
| contents | We analyze the damping of inflationary gravitational waves (GW) that re-enter the Hubble horizon before or during a post-inflationary era dominated by a meta-stable, right-handed neutrino (RHN), whose out-of-equilibrium decay releases entropy. Within a minimal type-I seesaw extension of the Standard Model (SM), we explore the conditions under which the population of thermally produced RHNs remain long-lived and cause a period of matter-domination. We find that the suppression of the GW spectrum occurs above a characteristic frequency determined by the RHN mass and active-sterile mixing. For RHN masses in the range $0.1$-$10$ GeV and mixing $10^{-12} \lesssim |V_{eN}|^2 \lesssim 10^{-5}$, we estimate such characteristic frequencies and the signal-to-noise ratio to assess the detection prospects in GW observatories such as THEIA, $μ$-ARES, LISA, BBO and ET. Additionally we use LIGO data to put upper bounds on the reheating temperature after inflation, for a given blue-tilted GW spectrum. We find complementarity between GW signals and laboratory searches in SHiP, DUNE and LEGEND-1000. Notably, RHN masses of $0.2$-$2$ GeV and mixing $10^{-10} \lesssim |V_{eN}|^2 \lesssim 10^{-7}$ are testable in both laboratory experiments and GW observations. Additionally, GW experiments can probe the canonical seesaw regime of light neutrino mass generation, a region largely inaccessible to laboratory searches. |
| format | Preprint |
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arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_15374 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Inflationary Gravitational Waves and Laboratory Searches as Complementary Probes of Right-handed Neutrinos Borboruah, Zafri A. Deppisch, Frank F. Ghoshal, Anish Malhotra, Lekhika High Energy Physics - Phenomenology Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics We analyze the damping of inflationary gravitational waves (GW) that re-enter the Hubble horizon before or during a post-inflationary era dominated by a meta-stable, right-handed neutrino (RHN), whose out-of-equilibrium decay releases entropy. Within a minimal type-I seesaw extension of the Standard Model (SM), we explore the conditions under which the population of thermally produced RHNs remain long-lived and cause a period of matter-domination. We find that the suppression of the GW spectrum occurs above a characteristic frequency determined by the RHN mass and active-sterile mixing. For RHN masses in the range $0.1$-$10$ GeV and mixing $10^{-12} \lesssim |V_{eN}|^2 \lesssim 10^{-5}$, we estimate such characteristic frequencies and the signal-to-noise ratio to assess the detection prospects in GW observatories such as THEIA, $μ$-ARES, LISA, BBO and ET. Additionally we use LIGO data to put upper bounds on the reheating temperature after inflation, for a given blue-tilted GW spectrum. We find complementarity between GW signals and laboratory searches in SHiP, DUNE and LEGEND-1000. Notably, RHN masses of $0.2$-$2$ GeV and mixing $10^{-10} \lesssim |V_{eN}|^2 \lesssim 10^{-7}$ are testable in both laboratory experiments and GW observations. Additionally, GW experiments can probe the canonical seesaw regime of light neutrino mass generation, a region largely inaccessible to laboratory searches. |
| title | Inflationary Gravitational Waves and Laboratory Searches as Complementary Probes of Right-handed Neutrinos |
| topic | High Energy Physics - Phenomenology Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.15374 |