Abstract
We calculate the electrical conductivity in the early universe at temperatures below as well as above the electroweak vacuum scale, ${T}_{c}\ensuremath{\simeq}100\mathrm{GeV}.$ Debye and dynamical screening of electric and magnetic interactions leads to a finite conductivity, ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{\mathrm{el}}\ensuremath{\sim}T/\ensuremath{\alpha}\mathrm{ln}(1/\ensuremath{\alpha}),$ at temperatures well below ${T}_{c}.$ At temperatures above, ${W}^{\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}}$ charge-exchange processes---analogous to color exchange through gluons in QCD---effectively stop left-handed charged leptons. However, right-handed leptons can carry current, resulting in ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{\mathrm{el}}/T$ being only a factor $\ensuremath{\sim}{\mathrm{cos}}^{4}{\ensuremath{\theta}}_{W}$ smaller than at temperatures below ${T}_{c}.$
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