UCLA

An epoch of Higgs relaxation may occur in the early universe during or immediately following postinflationary reheating. It has recently been pointed out that leptogenesis may occur in minimal extensions of the standard model during this epoch [A. Kusenko, L. Pearce, and L. Yang, Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 061302 (2015)]. We analyze Higgs relaxation taking into account the effects of perturbative and nonperturbative decays of the Higgs condensate, and we present a detailed derivation of the relevant kinetic equations and of the relevant particle interaction cross sections. We identify the parameter space in which a sufficiently large asymmetry is generated.