Fingerprint of GeV scale right-handed neutrinos on inflationary gravitational waves and PTA data

Abstract

We show that the seesaw mechanisms that exhibit right-handed neutrino mass-dependent non-standard post-inflationary cosmology make blue-tilted inflationary gravitational waves (GW) compatible with the recent findings of nHz stochastic GW background by the pulsar-timing arrays (PTAs) for high reheating temperatures. The right-handed neutrino (RHN) mass scale has to be $\mathcal{O}(\mathrm{GeV})$. Remarkably, such a scenario produces a correlated signature testable by the future LIGO run. In addition to contributing to the active neutrino masses, $\mathcal{O}(\mathrm{GeV})$ RHNs generate baryon asymmetry of the universe via low-scale-leptogenesis. They can be searched for in collider experiments. Therefore, the recent detection by PTAs is not only exciting for GWs in the nHz range; it paves the way to test and constrain well-studied mechanisms, such as seesaws, with a low-frequency and a correlated measurement of high-frequency GW spectral features, complementary to particle physics searches.

Comments: 7+3 pages, 2 captioned figures, significantly revised, title changed, an additional author, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D Letter