Lepton Flavor Asymmetries: from the early Universe to BBN

Abstract

Large primordial lepton flavor asymmetries with almost vanishing total baryon-minus-lepton number can evade the usual BBN and CMB constraints if neutrino oscillations lead to perfect flavor equilibration. Solving the momentum averaged quantum kinetic equations (QKEs) describing neutrino oscillations and interactions, we perform the first systematic investigation of this scenario, uncovering a rich flavor structure in stark contradiction to the assumption of simple flavor equilibration. We find (i) a particular direction in flavor space, $\Delta n_e \simeq -2/3 \, (-1) \Delta n_\mu$ for normal (inverted) neutrino mass hierarchy, in which the flavor equilibration is efficient and primordial asymmetries are essentially unconstrained, (ii) a minimal washout factor, $\Delta n_e^2|_\mathrm{BBN} \leq 0.03 \, (0.016) \sum_\alpha \Delta n_\alpha^2|_{\mathrm{ini}}$ yielding a conservative estimate for the allowed primordial asymmetries in a generic flavor direction, and (iii) particularly strong or weak washout if one of the initial flavor asymmetries vanishes due to non-adiabatic muon- or electron-driven MSW transitions. These results open up the possibility of a first-order QCD phase transition facilitated by large lepton asymmetries as well as baryogenesis from large and compensated $\Delta n_e =- \Delta n_\mu$ asymmetries. Our first-principles approach of deriving momentum averaged QKEs includes collision terms beyond the damping approximation, energy transfer between the neutrino and electron-photon plasma, and provides a fast and reliable way to investigate the impact of primordial lepton asymmetries at the time of BBN. We publicly release the Mathematica code COFLASY-M on GitHub which solves the QKEs numerically.