Damping rates in the MSSM and electroweak baryogenesis

Abstract

We present an analysis of the thermalization rate of Higgsinos and winos based on the imaginary part of the two-point Green function in the unbroken phase of the MSSM. We use improved propagators including resummation of hard thermal loops and the thermalization rate is computed at the one-loop level in the high temperature approximation. We find that the damping is typically dominated by scattering with gauge bosons, resulting in a damping rate of about γ H ̃ ≃0.025T , γ W ̃ ≃0.065T . The contribution from scattering with scalars is relatively small. Implications for baryogenesis are also discussed.