Leptogenesis and Low Energy CP Violation in Neutrino Physics

Taking into account the recent progress in the understanding of the lepton flavor effects in leptogenesis, we investigate in detail the possibility that the CP-violation necessary for the generation of the baryon asymmetry of the Universe is due exclusively to the Dirac and/or Majorana CP-violating phases in the PMNS neutrino mixing matrix U, and thus is directly related to the low energy CP-violation in the lepton sector (e.g., in neutrino oscillations, etc.). We first derive the conditions of CP-invariance of the neutrino Yukawa couplings lambda in the see-saw Lagrangian, and of the complex orthogonal matrix R in the "orthogonal" parametrization of lambda. We show, e.g. that under certain conditions (i) real R and specific CP-conserving values of the Majorana and Dirac phases can imply CP-violation, and (ii) purely imaginary R does not necessarily imply breaking of CP-symmetry. We study in detail the case of hierarchical heavy Majorana neutrino mass spectrum, presenting results for three possible types of light neutrino mass spectrum: (i) normal hierarchical, (ii) inverted hierarchical, and (iii) quasi -degenerate. Results in the alternative case of quasi -degenerate in mass heavy Majorana neutrinos, are also derived. The minimal supersymmetric extension of the standard theory with right-handed Majorana neutrinos and see-saw mechanism of neutrino mass generation is discussed as well. We illustrate the possible correlations between the baryon asymmetry of the Universe and (i) the rephasing invariant J(CP) controlling the magnitude of CP-violation in neutrino oscillations, or (ii) the effective Majorana mass in neutrinoless double beta decay, in the cases when the only source of CP-violation is respectively the Dirac or the Majorana phases in the neutrino mixing matrix. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.