TY - JOUR

T1 - Baryon number violation at high temperature in the standard model

AU - Dine, Michael

AU - Lechtenfeld, Olaf

AU - Sakita, Bunji

AU - Fischler, Willy

AU - Polchinski, Joseph

N1 - Funding Information: We wish to thank T. Banks, M. Shifman, L. Susskind, and M. Voloshin for discussions. The work of W. Fischler and J. Polchinski was supported in part by the Robert A. Welch Foundation and NSF Grant PHY 8605978; that of M. Dine by DOE contract DE-ACO2-83ER40107, and that of B. Sakita and 0. Lechtenfeld by NSF Grant PHY 86-15338. J. Polchinski was also supported by an A.P. Sloan Foundation fellowship. Copyright: Copyright 2015 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

PY - 1990/10/1

Y1 - 1990/10/1

N2 - We explore a suggestion that baryon number violation is unsuppressed in the standard model at high energies and temperatures. We find that baryon number violation is negligible in high energy scattering. On the other hand, in agreement with previous authors, we find that it is indeed unsuppressed at high temperatures. We give simple, qualitative arguments valid even in systems with many degrees of freedom. In particular, we show that there is no extra entropy suppression for production of sphaleron or soliton-antisoliton configurations. Above the weak interaction phase transition, a simple scaling argument gives the rate up to an unknown numerical factor. We also show that passage over the barrier is associated with fermion production. We illustrate the general considerations with a simple model which, for this problem, has features identical to those of the standard model. In this model it is possible to perform many computations explicitly, and a semiclassical analysis may be performed even at high temperature. In addition, we explain why certain criticisms which have been leveled at these ideas are not correct.

AB - We explore a suggestion that baryon number violation is unsuppressed in the standard model at high energies and temperatures. We find that baryon number violation is negligible in high energy scattering. On the other hand, in agreement with previous authors, we find that it is indeed unsuppressed at high temperatures. We give simple, qualitative arguments valid even in systems with many degrees of freedom. In particular, we show that there is no extra entropy suppression for production of sphaleron or soliton-antisoliton configurations. Above the weak interaction phase transition, a simple scaling argument gives the rate up to an unknown numerical factor. We also show that passage over the barrier is associated with fermion production. We illustrate the general considerations with a simple model which, for this problem, has features identical to those of the standard model. In this model it is possible to perform many computations explicitly, and a semiclassical analysis may be performed even at high temperature. In addition, we explain why certain criticisms which have been leveled at these ideas are not correct.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=0001320649&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/0550-3213(90)90195-J

DO - 10.1016/0550-3213(90)90195-J

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:0001320649

VL - 342

SP - 381

EP - 408

JO - Nuclear Physics, Section B

JF - Nuclear Physics, Section B

SN - 0550-3213

IS - 2

ER -