arXiv subjects

Kohei Kamada

Publications and source records attributed to Kohei Kamada.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2023

Revisiting Affleck-Dine Leptogenesis with light sleptons

We revisit the Affleck-Dine leptogenesis via the $L H_u$ flat direction with a light slepton field. Although the light slepton field is favored in low-energy SUSY phenomenologies, such as the muon $g-2$ anomaly and bino-slepton coannihilation, it may cause a problem in the Affleck-Dine leptogenesis: it may create an unwanted charge-breaking vacuum in the Affleck-Dine field potential so that the Affleck-Dine field is trapped during the course of leptogenesis. We investigate the conditions under which such an unwanted vacuum exists and clarify that both thermal and quantum corrections are important for the (temporal) disappearance of the charge-breaking minimum. We also confirm that if the charge-breaking vacuum disappears due to the thermal or quantum correction, the correct baryon asymmetry can be produced while avoiding the cosmological gravitino problem.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2023

A new constraint on primordial lepton flavour asymmetries

A chiral chemical potential present in the early universe can source helical hypermagnetic fields through the chiral plasma instability. If these hypermagnetic fields survive until the electroweak phase transition, they source a contribution to the baryon asymmetry of the universe. In this letter, we demonstrate that lepton flavour asymmetries above $|μ|/T \sim 9 \times 10^{-3}$ trigger this mechanism even for vanishing total lepton number. This excludes the possibility of such large lepton flavour asymmetries present at temperatures above $10^6$ GeV, setting a constraint which is about two orders of magnitude stronger than the current CMB and BBN limits.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2023

Decay law of magnetic turbulence with helicity balanced by chiral fermions

In plasmas composed of massless electrically charged fermions, chirality can be interchanged with magnetic helicity while preserving the total chirality through the quantum chiral anomaly. The decay of turbulent energy in plasmas such as those in the early Universe and compact stars is usually controlled by certain conservation laws. In the case of zero total chirality, when the magnetic helicity density balances with the appropriately scaled chiral chemical potential to zero, the total chirality no longer determines the decay. We propose that in such a case, an adaptation to the Hosking integral, which is conserved in nonhelical magnetically dominated turbulence, controls the decay in turbulence with helicity balanced by chiral fermions. We show, using a high resolution numerical simulation, that this is indeed the case. The magnetic energy density decays and the correlation length increases with time just like in nonhelical turbulence with vanishing chiral chemical potential. But here, the magnetic helicity density is nearly maximum and shows a scaling with time $t$ proportional to $t^{-2/3}$. This is unrelated to the $t^{-2/3}$ decay of magnetic {\it energy} in fully helical magnetic turbulence. The modulus of the chiral chemical potential decays in the same fashion. This is much slower than the exponential decay previously expected in theories of asymmetric baryon production from the hypermagnetic helicity decay after axion inflation.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2023

Baryogenesis from sphaleron decoupling

The electroweak sphaleron process breaks the baryon number conservation within the realms of the Standard Model of particle physics (SM). Recently, it is pointed out that its decoupling may provide the out-of-equilibrium condition required for baryogenesis. In this paper, we study such a scenario taking into account the baryon-number wash-out effect of the sphaleron itself to improve the estimate. We clarify the amount of CP violation required for this scenario to explain the observed asymmetry.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2023

Wash-in leptogenesis after axion inflation

CP violation and the violation of baryon-minus-lepton number B-L do not necessarily have to occur simultaneously in order to accomplish successful leptogenesis. Instead, it suffices if new CP-violating interactions at high energies result in primordial charge asymmetries, which are then reprocessed into a nonvanishing B-L asymmetry by right-handed neutrinos (RHNs) at lower energies. In this paper, we study this novel mechanism known as "wash-in leptogenesis", utilizing axion inflation as the source of high-scale CP violation. We specifically consider axion inflation coupled to the Standard Model hypercharge sector, which results in the dual production of hypermagnetic helicity and fermionic charge asymmetries. Although the survival of these charges is endangered by sphaleron processes, magnetic diffusion, and the chiral plasma instability, we find a large range of viable scenarios. We consistently account for RHN flavor effects and coherence among the Standard Model lepton flavors across a wide range of RHN masses. We find a lower bound of 10^(5...9) GeV on the mass of the lightest RHN involved in wash-in leptogenesis, depending on the onset of turbulence in the chiral plasma and the Hubble scale of inflation. Our model is representative of a broader class of new leptogenesis scenarios and suggests interesting observational signatures with regard to intergalactic magnetic fields, primordial black holes, and gravitational waves.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2022

New description of the scaling evolution of the cosmological magneto-hydrodynamic system

We present a new description of cosmological evolution of the primordial magnetic field under the condition that it is non-helical and its energy density is larger than the kinetic energy density. We argue that the evolution can be described by four different regimes, according to whether the decay dynamics is linear or not, and whether the dominant dissipation term is the shear viscosity or the drag force. Using this classification and conservation of the Hosking integral, we present analytic models to adequately interpret the results of various numerical simulations of field evolution with variety of initial conditions. It is found that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, the decay of the field is generally slow, exhibiting the inverse transfer, because of the conservation of the Hosking integral. Using the description proposed here, we may trace the intermediate evolution history of the magnetic field and clarify whether each process governing its evolution is frozen or not, which is essential to follow the evolution of relatively weak magnetic fields.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2022

Chiral effects in astrophysics and cosmology

The microscopic quantum nature of elementary particles, chirality, leads to macroscopic phenomena like the chiral anomaly, chiral magnetic effect, and chiral plasma instability. We review recent progress of the studies of these chiral effects in high-energy astrophysics, such as pulsar kicks, magnetars, and core-collapse supernovae, and early Universe cosmology, such as the primordial magnetic field, baryogenesis, and chiral gravitational waves. We also provide a pedagogical introduction to the chiral effects and low-energy effective theories to describe them in and out of equilibrium -- the chiral (magneto)hydrodynamics, chiral kinetic theory, and chiral radiation transport theory for neutrinos.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2022

Formation of Chiral Soliton Lattice

The Chiral Soliton Lattice (CSL) is a lattice structure composed of domain walls aligned in parallel at equal intervals, which is energetically stable in the presence of a background magnetic field and a finite (baryon) chemical potential due to the topological term originated from the chiral anomaly. We study its formation from the vacuum state, with describing the CSL as a layer of domain-wall disks surrounded by the vortex or string loop, based on the Nambu-Goto-type effective theory. We show that the domain wall nucleates via quantum tunneling when the magnetic field is strong enough. We evaluate its nucleation rate and determine the critical magnetic field strength with which the nucleation rate is no longer exponentially suppressed. We apply this analysis to the neutral pion in the two-flavor QCD as well as the axion-like particles (ALPs) with a finite (baryon) chemical potential under an external magnetic field. In the former case, even though the CSL state is more energetically stable than the vacuum state and the nucleation rate becomes larger for sufficiently strong magnetic field, it cannot be large enough so that the nucleation of the domain walls is not exponentially suppressed and promoted, without suffering from the tachyonic instability of the charged pion fluctuations. In the latter case, we confirm that the effective interaction of the ALPs generically includes the topological term required for the CSL state to be energetically favored. We show that the ALP CSL formation is promoted if the magnetic field strength and the chemical potential of the system is slightly larger than the scale of the axion decay constant.

hep-th↗

arXiv2022

Vacuum decay in the Lorentzian path integral

We apply the Lorentzian path integral to the decay of a false vacuum and estimate the false-vacuum decay rate. To make the Lorentzian path integral convergent, the deformation of an integral contour is performed by following the Picard-Lefschetz theory. We show that the nucleation rate of a critical bubble, for which the corresponding bounce action is extremized, has the same exponent as the Euclidean approach. We also extend our computation to the nucleation of a bubble larger or smaller than the critical one to which the Euclidean formalism is not applicable.

hep-th↗

arXiv2021

Gauge Field Production and Schwinger Reheating in Runaway Axion Inflation

In a class of (pseudoscalar) inflation, inflationary phase is followed by a kination phase, where the Universe is dominated by the kinetic energy of the inflaton that runs away in a vanishing scalar potential. In this class of postinflationary evolution of the Universe, reheating of the Universe cannot be achieved by the inflaton particle decay, which requires its coherent oscillation in a quadratic potential. In this study, we explore the U(1) gauge field production through the Chern-Simons coupling between the pseudoscalar inflaton and the gauge field during the kination era and examine the subsequent pair-particle production induced by the amplified gauge field known as the Schwinger effect, which can lead to reheating of the Universe. We find that with a rough estimate of the Schwinger effect for the Standard Model hyper U(1) gauge field and subsequent thermalization of the pair-produced particles, a successful reheating of the Universe can be achieved by their eventual domination over the kinetic energy of the inflaton, with some reasonable parameter sets. This can be understood as a concrete realization of the "Schwinger reheating". Constraints from the later-time cosmology are also discussed.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2021

Wash-In Leptogenesis

We present a leptogenesis mechanism based on the standard type-I seesaw model that successfully operates at right-handed-neutrino masses as low as a few 100 TeV. This mechanism, which we dub "wash-in leptogenesis", does not require any CP violation in the neutrino sector and can be implemented even in the regime of strong wash-out. The key idea behind wash-in leptogenesis is to generalize standard freeze-out leptogenesis to a nonminimal cosmological background in which the chemical potentials of all particles not in chemical equilibrium at the temperature of leptogenesis are allowed to take arbitrary values. This sets the stage for building a plethora of new baryogenesis models where chemical potentials generated at high temperatures are reprocessed to generate a nonvanishing B-L asymmetry at low temperatures. As concrete examples, we discuss wash-in leptogenesis after axion inflation and in the context of grand unification.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2021

Chiral gravitational effect in time-dependent backgrounds

Gravitational counterpart of the chiral magnetic effect, which is referred as the chiral gravitational effect, can also be of interest in a cosmological setup. In this study, we investigate this effect in the time-dependent chiral asymmetric fermion background and in the expanding spacetime by formulating the effective action of gravitational waves. We also analyze the anomaly equation to see how the backreaction from gravitational waves to thermal chiral plasma occurs. We find that the non-trivial time dependence of chiral chemical potential, which can be induced in some scenarios of baryogenesis, is the key ingredient of the chiral gravitational effect. It turns out that the "memory" of the effect is imprinted on the high frequency gravitational waves propagating in the plasma. Cosmological implications and potential effects on the gravitational wave observation are briefly discussed.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2021

Occurrence of Tachyonic Preheating in the Mixed Higgs-$R^2$ Model

It has recently been suggested that at the post-inflationary stage of the mixed Higgs-$R^2$ model of inflation efficient particle production can arise from the tachyonic instability of the Higgs field. It might complete the preheating of the Universe if appropriate conditions are satisfied, especially in the Higgs-like regime. In this paper, we study this behavior in more depth, including the conditions for occurrence, analytical estimates for the maximal efficiency, and the necessary degree of fine-tuning among the model parameters to complete preheating by this effect. We find that the parameter sets that cause the most efficient tachyonic instabilities obey simple laws in both the Higgs-like regime and the $R^2$-like regime, respectively. We then estimate the efficiency of this instability. In particular, even in the deep $R^2$-like regime with a small non-minimal coupling, this effect is strong enough to complete preheating although a severe fine-tuning is required among the model parameters. We also estimate how much fine-tuning is needed to complete preheating by this effect. It is shown that the fine-tuning of parameters for the sufficient particle production is at least $ < \mathcal{O}(0.1) $ in the deep Higgs-like regime with a large scalaron mass, while it is more severe $\sim {\cal O}(10^{-4})-{\cal O}(10^{-5})$ in the $R^2$-like regime with a small non-minimal coupling.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2020

Baryon isocurvature constraints on the primordial hypermagnetic fields

It has been pointed out that hypermagnetic helicity decay at the electroweak symmetry breaking may have produced the observed baryon asymmetry of the Universe through the chiral anomaly in the standard model of particle physics. Although fully helical magnetic field that can adequately produce the observed baryon asymmetry is not strong enough to explain the origin of the intergalactic magnetic field inferred by the Fermi satellite, the mixture of helical and nonhelical primordial magnetic fields may explain both baryogenesis and the intergalactic magnetic fields simultaneously. We first show that such a scenario is ruled out by the constraint on the amplitude of baryon isocurvature perturbations produced by the primordial magnetic fields to avoid overproduction of deuterium at the big bang nucleosynthesis. Then we show that any attempt to explain the origin of intergalactic magnetic field by primordial magnetogenesis before the electroweak symmetry breaking does not work due to the above constraint irrespective of the helicity and baryogenesis mechanism.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2020

Gravitational Waves from Primordial Magnetic Fields via Photon-Graviton Conversion

We explore a novel process in the early Universe in which thermalized photons are converted into gravitons in the presence of strong primordial magnetic fields. It is found that the frequency of generated gravitational waves (GWs) is typically of order of GHz and their amplitude can be up to $ Ω_\mathrm{GW}h^2 \sim 10^{-10}$. If detected with future developments of the technology to explore this frequency region, the produced stochastic GW background enables us to know when and how strong the primordial magnetic fields are generated. From the peak frequency of the GWs, we can also probe the number of relativistic degrees of freedom at that time.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2020

Renormalization in gravitational leptogenesis with pseudo-scalar-tensor coupling

We consider the renormalization in the pseudo-scalar inflation models with the gravitational Chern-Simons term. In this model, lepton asymmetry is generated from the chiral gravitational waves produced due to the Chern-Simons term through the gravitational chiral anomaly. However, it is known that the naive estimate of the expectation value of the gravitational Chern-Pontryagin density as well as the resultant lepton number density depend on the UV-cutoff scale, which raises a question on their validity. In this paper, we propose a way to renormalize the expectation value of the Chern-Pontryagin density to remove the UV-cutoff dependence. We also discuss the renormalized lepton number density when we adopt the minimal subtraction scheme and the viability of the gravitational leptogenesis scenario.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2020

On catalyzed vacuum decay around a radiating black hole and the crisis of the electroweak vacuum

False vacuum decay is a key feature in quantum field theories and exhibits a distinct signature in the early Universe cosmology. It has recently been suggested that the false vacuum decay is catalyzed by a black hole (BH), which might cause the catastrophe of the Standard Model Higgs vacuum if primordial BHs are formed in the early Universe. We investigate vacuum phase transition of a scalar field around a radiating BH with taking into account the effect of Hawking radiation. We find that the vacuum decay rate slightly decreases in the presence of the thermal effect since the scalar potential is stabilized near the horizon. However, the stabilization effect becomes weak at the points sufficiently far from the horizon. Consequently, we find that the decay rate is not significantly changed unless the effective coupling constant of the scalar field to the radiation is extremely large. This implies that the change of the potential from the Hawking radiation does not help prevent the Standard Model Higgs vacuum decay catalyzed by a BH.

hep-th↗

arXiv2020

Magnetogenesis from a rotating scalar: à la scalar chiral magnetic effect

The chiral magnetic effect (CME) is a phenomenon in which an electric current is induced parallel to an external magnetic field in the presence of chiral asymmetry in a fermionic system. In this paper, we show that the electric current induced by the dynamics of a pseudo-scalar field which anomalously couples to electromagnetic fields can be interpreted as closely analogous to the CME. In particular, the velocity of the pseudo-scalar field, which is the phase of a complex scalar, indicates that the system carries a global U(1) number asymmetry as the source of the induced current. We demonstrate that an initial kick to the phase-field velocity and an anomalous coupling between the phase-field and gauge fields are naturally provided, in a set-up such as the Affleck-Dine mechanism. The resulting asymmetry carried by the Affleck-Dine field can give rise to instability in the (electro)magnetic field. Cosmological consequences of this mechanism are also investigated.

hep-ph↗