Journal
PHYSICS LETTERS B
Volume 574, Issue 1-2, Pages 75-81Publisher
ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.physletb.2003.09.015
Keywords
baryon number; instanton; semiclassical methods
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We present a semiclassical study of the suppression of topology changing, baryon number violating transitions induced by particle collisions in the electroweak theory. We find that below the sphaleron energy the suppression exponent is remarkably close to the analytic estimates based on a low energy expansion about the instanton. Above the sphaleron energy, the relevant semiclassical solutions have qualitatively different properties from those below the sphaleron: they correspond to jumps on top of the barrier. Yet these processes remain exponentially suppressed, and, furthermore, the tunneling exponent flattens out in energy. We also derive lower bounds on the tunneling exponent which show that baryon number violation remains exponentially suppressed up to very high energies of at least 30 sphaleron masses (250 TeV). (C) 2003 Published by Elsevier B.V.
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