Inflation and majoron dark matter in the seesaw mechanism

Abstract

We propose that inflation and dark matter have a common origin, connected to the neutrino mass generation scheme. As a model we consider spontaneous breaking of global lepton number within the seesaw mechanism. We show that it provides an acceptable inflationary scenario consistent with the recent CMB B-mode observation by the BICEP2 experiment. The scheme may also account for the baryon asymmetry of the Universe through leptogenesis for reasonable parameter choices.

Comments: 6p, 3figs. v2: 2 extra tables. Version to appear in PRD