Yukawa interactions and dynamical generation of mass in an external magnetic field

Abstract

In this work we study the dynamical generation of a fermion mass induced by a constant and uniform external magnetic field in an Abelian gauge model with a Yukawa term. We show that the Yukawa coupling not only enhances the dynamical generation of the mass, but it substantially decreases the magnetic field required for the mass to be generated at temperatures comparable to the electroweak critical temperature. These results indicate that if large enough primordial magnetic fields were present during the early universe evolution, the field-induced generation of fermion masses, which in turn corresponds to the generation of fermion bound states, may play an important role in the electroweak phase transition.