Abstract
We investigate collisional decay of the axial charge in an electron-photon plasma at temperatures 10MeV-100GeV. We demonstrate that the decay rate of the axial charge is first order in the fine-structure constant Γ_{flip}∝αm_{e}^{2}/T and thus orders of magnitude greater than the naive estimate which has been in use for decades. This counterintuitive result arises through infrared divergences regularized at high temperature by environmental effects. The decay of axial charge plays an important role in the problems of leptogenesis and cosmic magnetogenesis.
Highlights
We investigate collisional decay of the axial charge in an electron-photon plasma at temperatures 10 MeV–100 GeV
We demonstrate that the decay rate of the axial charge is first order in the fine-structure constant Γflip ∝ αm2e=T and orders of magnitude greater than the naive estimate which has been in use for decades
The decay of axial charge plays an important role in the problems of leptogenesis and cosmic magnetogenesis
Summary
We investigate collisional decay of the axial charge in an electron-photon plasma at temperatures 10 MeV–100 GeV. It has been argued that due to the weakness of nonconservation of the axial charge current in an ultrarelativistic plasma, the proper description of the evolution of primordial cosmic magnetic fields requires an extension of MHD called chiral magnetohydrodynamics [6,7,8], see Refs.
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