Structure of the high temperature gauge ground state and electroweak production of the baryon asymmetry

Abstract

We investigate the connection of the baryon asymmetry of the universe (BAU) with the Chern-Simons structure of the ground state of gauge theories at high temperatures. We formulate in an explicitly gauge-invariant way the notion of the effective potential for density of the Chern-Simons charge and estimate CP noninvariant corrections to it coming from the nonequilibrium stages of universe expansion. We find that for the case of trivial structure of the ground state the BAU production is only possible if the low-energy CP violation in anomalous reactions δ ms is larger than 10 −4. We discuss the fate of the CP domain structure of the universe which appears when there is discrete degeneracy of the ground state. The magnitude of BAU could be large only with sufficiently strong high temperature CP violation. So the BAU generation in the framework of standard electroweak theory (where δ ms∼10 −18) takes place only when there is infinite degeneracy. We estimate the Higgs and top masses in the Coleman-Weinberg type of theory.