1998/05/31 by Guy D. Moore · 5 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Baryogenesis #Baryon #Baryon number #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Electroweak interaction #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Particle physics #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Phase transition #Physics #Quantum electrodynamics #Quantum mechanics #Sphaleron #Transition rate matrix #hep-lat #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.59.014503
published as Phys. Rev. D 59, 014503 (1998) · 41 pages, 13 figures included with psfig. Some wordings clarified, nothing substantial changed
arxiv created 1998/08/05 · openalex publication_date 1998/11/19 · arxiv updated 2016/08/24 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We present details for a method to compute the broken phase sphaleron rate (rate of hot baryon number violation below the electroweak phase transition) nonperturbatively, using a combination of multicanonical and real time lattice techniques. The calculation includes the ``dynamical prefactor,'' which accounts for prompt recrossings of the sphaleron barrier. The prefactor depends on the hard thermal loops, getting smaller with increasing Debye mass; but for realistic Debye masses the effect is not large. The baryon number erasure rate in the broken phase is slower than a perturbative estimate by about exp(\ensuremath-3.6). Assuming the electroweak phase transition has enough latent heat to reheat the universe to the equilibrium temperature, baryon number is preserved after the phase transition if the ratio of (``dimensionally reduced'' thermal) scalar to gauge couplings \ensuremathλ/g2 is less than 0.037.