Multiplicative Conservation of Baryon Number and Baryogenesis

Understand

In the canonical seesaw mechanism of neutrino mass, lepton number is only multiplicatively conserved, which enables the important phenomenon of leptogenesis to occur, as an attractive explanation of the present baryon asymmetry of the Universe.

• A parallel possibility, hitherto unrecognized, also holds for baryon number and baryogenesis.
• This new idea is shown to be naturally realized in the context of a known supersymmetric string-inspired extension of the Standard Model, based on E(6) particle content, and having an extra U(1)_N gauge symmetry.
• Within this framework, two-loop radiative neutrino masses are also possible, together with a new form of very long-lived matter.