We investigate the relation between non-unitarity of the leptonic mixing matrix and leptogenesis. We discuss how all parameters of the canonical type-I seesaw mechanism can, in principle, be reconstructed from the neutrino mass matrix and the deviation of the effective low-energy leptonic mixing matrix from unitary. When the mass M′ of the lightest right-handed neutrino is much lighter than the masses of the others, we show that its decay asymmetries within flavour-dependent leptogenesis can be expressed in terms of two contributions, one depending on the unique dimension five (d = 5) operator generating neutrino masses and one depending on the dimension six (d = 6) operator associated with non-unitarity. In low-energy seesaw scenarios where small lepton number violation explains the smallness of neutrino masses, the lepton number conserving d = 6 operator contribution generically dominates over the d = 5 operator contribution which results in a strong enhancement of the flavour-dependent decay asymmetries without any resonance effects. To calculate the produced final baryon asymmetry, the flavour equilibration effects directly related to non-unitarity have to be taken into account. In a simple realization of this non-unitarity driven leptogenesis, the lower bound on M′ is found to be about 108 GeV at the onset of the strong washout regime, more than one order of magnitude below the bound in “standard” thermal leptogenesis.
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