Nonthermal leptogenesis with almost degenerate superheavy neutrinos

We present a model with minimal assumptions for nonthermal leptogenesis with almost degenerate superheavy right-handed neutrinos in a supersymmetric setup. In this scenario the gauge singlet inflaton is directly coupled to the right-handed (s)neutrinos with a mass heavier than the inflaton mass. This helps to avoid potential problems which can naturally arise otherwise. The inflaton decays into standard model leptons and Higgs bosons via off-shell right-handed (s)neutrinos and reheats the Universe. The same channel is also responsible for generating the lepton asymmetry, thus requiring no stage of preheating in order to excite superheavy (s)neutrinos. The suppressed decay rate of the inflaton naturally leads to a sufficiently low reheat temperature, which in addition, prevents any wash out of the yielded asymmetry. We will particularly elaborate on important differences from leptogenesis with on-shell (s)neutrinos. It is shown that for nearly degenerate neutrinos a successful leptogenesis can be accommodated for a variety of inflationary models with a rather wide ranging inflationary scale.