Electroweak Baryogenesis without the Phase Transition

I describe a new way for baryogenesis to proceed, which evades many of the problems of GUT and electroweak scenarios. If the reheat temperature after inflation is below the electroweak scale, neither GUT baryon production nor traditional electroweak baryogenesis can occur. However, non-thermal production of sphaleron configurations via preheating could generate the observed baryon asymmetry of the universe. Such low scale baryon production is particularly attractive since it ...

Baryogenesis during the electroweak phase transition is a plausible scenario for for the origin of matter in the Universe. Furthermore, it has the advantage over other scenarios in that one can imagine that much of the physics involved may be experimentally probed before long. In the past year a consensus has developed about major mechanisms involved. In this talk I give an overview of the standard picture, and discuss briefly the advances over the past year that suggest elec...

We present a novel scenario for baryogenesis in a hybrid inflation model at the electroweak scale, in which the Standard Model Higgs field triggers the end of inflation. One of the conditions for successful baryogenesis, the departure from thermal equilibrium, is naturally achieved at the stage of preheating after inflation. The inflaton oscillations induce large occupation numbers for long-wavelength configurations of Higgs and gauge fields, which leads to a large rate of sp...

Presented at the 1992 Meeting of the DPF, Fermilab. The electroweak phase transition is reviewed in light of some recent developments. Emphasis is on the issue whether the transition is first or second order and its possible role in the generation of the baryon asymmetry of the universe.

Electroweak baryogenesis could be very efficient at the end of an electroweak-scale inflation. Reheating that followed inflation could create a highly non-equilibrium plasma, in which the baryon number violating transitions were rapid. In addition, the time-dependent motions of the scalar degrees of freedom could provide the requisite CP violation. If the final reheat temperature was below 100 GeV, there was no wash-out of the baryon asymmetry after thermalization. The observ...

Electroweak baryogenesis (EWBG) remains a theoretically attractive and experimentally testable scenario for explaining the cosmic baryon asymmetry. We review recent progress in computations of the baryon asymmetry within this framework and discuss their phenomenological consequences. We pay particular attention to methods for analyzing the electroweak phase transition and calculating CP-violating asymmetries, the development of Standard Model extensions that may provide the n...

Existence and properties of the electroweak phase transition in the early universe depend strongly on the mass of the Higgs scalar M_H. There is presumably no true symmetry restoration at high temperature. Nevertheless, a first order phase transition occurs in the standard model for M_H smaller than about 70 GeV. For a realistic scalar mass M_H larger than about 70 GeV the transition to the high temperature regime is described by a crossover, due to the strong electroweak gau...

We describe a new mechanism for the generation of the baryon asymmetry of the universe during a first order electroweak phase transition. The mechanism requires the existence of two (or more) baryon number carrying scalar fields with masses and CP violating mixing which vary with the Higgs field expectation value. This mechanism can be implemented using squarks in supersymmetric theories or using leptoquarks. Our central observation is that reflection of these scalars from a ...

We consider origins of the baryon asymmetry which we observe today. We review the progress of electroweak-scale baryogenesis, and show a new mechanism, string-scale baryogenesis.

We propose a new mechanism for late cosmological baryon asymmetry in models with first order electroweak phase transition. Lepton asymmetry arises through the decay of particles produced out of equilbrium in bubble collisions and is converted into baryon asymmetry by sphalerons. Supersymmetric models with explicitly broken R-parity may provide a suiatble framework for the implementation of this mechanism.