Type II leptogenesis and the neutrino mass scale

We discuss the effect of the neutrino mass scale on baryogenesis via the out-of-equilibrium decay of the lightest right-handed (s)neutrinos in type II see-saw models. We calculate the type II contributions to the decay asymmetries for minimal scenarios based on the Standard Model and on the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model, where the additional direct mass term for the neutrinos arises from a Higgs triplet vacuum expectation value. The result in the supersymmetric case is new and we correct the previous result in the scenario based on the Standard Model. We confirm and generalize our results by calculating the decay asymmetries in an effective approach, which is independent of the realization of the type II contribution. We derive a general upper bound on the decay asymmetry in type II see-saw models and find that it increases with the neutrino mass scale, in sharp contrast to the type I case which leads to an upper bound of about 0.1 eV on the neutrino mass scale. We find a lower bound on the mass of the lightest right-handed neutrino, significantly below the corresponding type I bound for partially degenerate neutrinos. This lower bound decreases with increasing neutrino mass scale, making leptogenesis more consistent with the gravitino constraints in supersymmetric models. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.