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Leptogenesis typically requires the introduction of heavy particles whose out-of-equilibrium decays are essential for generating a matter-antimatter asymmetry, according to one of Sakharov's conditions. We demonstrate that in Dirac leptogenesis, scatterings between the light degrees of freedom - Standard Model particles plus Dirac neutrinos - are sufficient to generate the asymmetry. Due to its vanishing source term in the Boltzmann equations, the asymmetry of right-handed neutrinos solely arises through wash-in processes. Sakharov's conditions are satisfied because the right-handed neutrino partners are out of equilibrium. Consequently, heavy degrees of freedom never needed to be produced in the early universe, allowing for a reheating temperature well below their mass scale. Considering a minimal leptoquark model, we discuss the viable parameter space along with the observational signature of an increased number of effective neutrinos in the early universe. 

Baryon number violation is our most sensitive probe of physics beyond the Standard Model, especially through the study of nucleon decays. Angular momentum conservation requires a lepton in the final state of such decays, kinematically restricted to electrons, muons, or neutrinos. We show that operators involving taus, which are at first sight too heavy to play a role in nucleon decays, still lead to clean nucleon decay channels with tau neutrinos. While many of them are already constrained from existing two-body searches such as p→π+ν, other operators induce many-body decays such as p→ηπ+ν¯τ and n→K+π−ντ that have never been searched for. 

Charged lepton flavor violation arises in the Standard Model Effective Field Theory at mass dimension six. The operators that induce neutrinoless muon and tauon decays are among the best constrained and are sensitive to new-physics scales up to 107GeV. An entirely different class of lepton-flavor-violating operators violates lepton flavors by two units rather than one and does not lead to such clean signatures. Even the well-known case of muonium--anti-muonium conversion that falls into this category is only sensitive to two out of the three ΔLμ=−ΔLe=2 dimension-six operators. We derive constraints on many of these operators from lepton flavor universality and show how to make further progress with future searches at Belle II and future experiments such as Z factories or muon colliders. 

Abstract Q-balls are non-topological solitons arising in scalar field theories. Solutions for rotating Q-balls (and the related boson stars) have been shown to exist when the angular momentum is equal to an integer multiple of the Q-ball chargeQ. Here we consider the possibility of classically long-lived metastable rotating Q-balls with small angular momentum, even for large charge, for all scalar theories that support non-rotating Q-balls. This is relevant for rotating extensions of Q-balls and related solitons such as boson stars as it impacts their cosmological phenomenology. arXiv:2302.11589 

We study the prospects of probing neutrino mass models at the newly proposed antimuon collider μTRISTAN, involving μ+e− scattering at s√=346 GeV and μ+μ+ scattering at s√=2 TeV. We show that μTRISTAN is uniquely sensitive to leptophilic neutral and doubly-charged scalars naturally occurring in various neutrino mass models, such as Zee, Zee-Babu, cocktail, and type-II seesaw models, over a wide range of mass and coupling values, well beyond the current experimental constraints. It also allows for the possibility to correlate the collider signals with neutrino mixing parameters and charged lepton flavor violating observables. 

Q-balls are bound-state configurations of complex scalars stabilized by a conserved Noether charge Q. They are solutions to a second-order differential equation that is structurally identical to Euclidean vacuum-decay bounce solutions in three dimensions. This enables us to translate the recent tunneling potential approach to Q-balls, which amounts to a reformulation of the problem that can simplify the task of finding approximate and even exact Q-ball solutions. 

The nature of neutrino masses and the matter-antimatter asymmetry of our universe are two of the most important open problems in particle physics today and are notoriously difficult to test with current technology. Dirac neutrinos offer a solution through a leptogenesis mechanism that hinges on the smallness of neutrino masses and resultant non-thermalization of the right-handed neutrino partners in the early universe. We thoroughly explore possible realizations of this Dirac leptogenesis idea, revealing new windows for highly efficient asymmetry generation. In many of them, the number of relativistic degrees of freedom, Neff, is severely enhanced compared to standard cosmology and offers a novel handle to constrain Dirac leptogenesis with upcoming measurements of the cosmic microwave background. Realizations involving leptoquarks even allow for low-scale post-sphaleron baryogenesis and predict proton decay. These novel aspects render Dirac leptogenesis surprisingly testable. 

Abstract Non-topological solitons are localized classical field configurations stabilized by a Noether charge. Friedberg, Lee, and Sirlin proposed a simple renormalizable soliton model in their seminal 1976 paper, consisting of a complex scalar field that carries the Noether charge and a real-scalar mediator. We revisit this model, point out commonalities and differences withQ-ball solitons, and provide analytic approximations to the underlying differential equations.