Researchers propose heavy neutrino role in matter dominance

Researchers from the University of Southampton and the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur suggest that a heavy neutrino may explain why the universe is composed of matter rather than being annihilated by antimatter.

According to the study published in Physical Review Letters, a particle previously dismissed as an irrelevant background detail in the minimal seesaw model may have played a critical role. Dr. Rishav Roshan and Dr. Sudipta Show propose that this decoupled heavy neutrino decays so slowly that it briefly dominated the energy density of the early universe. This slow decay may have provided the necessary asymmetry to favor matter over antimatter following the Big Bang.