Theory and Phenomenology of Dirac Leptogenesis

Dirac leptogenesis, in which neutrinos are purely Dirac and develop small but nonzero effective masses without the aid of the see-saw mechanism, provides an interesting alternative to the standard leptogenesis picture. Here we review the theory and phenomenology of Dirac leptogenesis and show that it is a viable theory capable of simultaneously satisfying all relevant bounds from cosmology, neutrino physics, and flavor violation. In addition, we also explore several potential extensions of the model, such as the possibility of right-handed sneutrino dark matter and the potential for relating the leptogenesis mechanism to the origin of the mu-term. Theories with a heavy gravitino and gaugino masses generated by anomaly mediation emerge as one natural context for Dirac leptogenesis. In such models the lightest neutralino is often expected to be predominately wino or Higgsino, and is a viable dark matter candidate. We conclude with an examination of the prospects for detecting the effectively monoenergetic photon signal that results from the annihilation of such a dark matter particle in the galactic halo.