Cold Electroweak Baryogenesis Research Articles

Simulations of cold electroweak baryogenesis: dependence on the source of CP-violation

We compute the baryon asymmetry created in a tachyonic electroweak symmetry breaking transition, focusing on the dependence on the source of effective CP-violation. Earlier simulations of Cold Electroweak Baryogenesis have almost exclusively considered a very specific CP-violating term explicitly biasing Chern-Simons number. We compare four different dimension six, scalar-gauge CP-violating terms, involving both the Higgs field and another dynamical scalar coupled to SU(2) or U(1) gauge fields. We find that for sensible values of parameters, all implementations can generate a baryon asymmetry consistent with observations, showing that baryogenesis is a generic outcome of a fast tachyonic electroweak transition.

Simulations of Cold Electroweak Baryogenesis: quench from portal coupling to new singlet field

We compute the baryon asymmetry generated from Cold Electroweak Baryogenesis, when a dynamical Beyond-the-Standard-Model scalar singlet field triggers the spinodal transition. Using a simple potential for this additional field, we match the speed of the quench to earlier simulations with a “by-hand” mass flip. We find that for the parameter subspace most similar to a by-hand transition, the final baryon asymmetry shows a similar dependence on quench time and is of the same magnitude. For more general parameter choices the Higgs-singlet dynamics can be very complicated, resulting in an enhancement of the final baryon asymmetry. Our results validate and generalise results of simulations in the literature and open up the Cold Electroweak Baryogenesis scenario to further model building.

Simulations of Cold Electroweak Baryogenesis: finding the optimal quench time

We revisit the numerical computation of the baryon asymmetry from Cold Electroweak Baryogenesis given the physical Higgs mass. We investigate the dependence of the asymmetry on the speed at which electroweak symmetry breaking takes place. The maximum asymmetry does not occur for arbitrarily fast quenches, but at quench times of about τq ≃ 16mH− 1, with no asymmetry created for quenches slower than τq > 30mH− 1. Curiously, we also find that the overall sign of the asymmetry depends on the quench time.

Simulations of Cold Electroweak Baryogenesis: hypercharge U(1) and the creation of helical magnetic fields

We perform numerical simulations of Cold Electroweak Baryogenesis, including for the first time in the Bosonic sector the full electroweak gauge group SU(2) × U(1) and CP-violation. We find that the maximum generated baryon asymmetry is reduced by a factor of three relative to the SU(2)-only model of [1], but that the quench time dependence is very similar. In addition, we compute the magnitude of the helical magnetic fields, and find that it is proportional to the strength of CP-violation and dependent on quench time, but is not proportional to the magnitude of the baryon asymmetry as proposed in [2, 3]. Astrophysical signatures of primordial magnetic helicity can therefore not in general be used as evidence that electroweak baryogenesis has taken place.

Baryogenesis from strong CP violation and the QCD axion.

We show that strong CP violation from the QCD axion can be responsible for the matter antimatter asymmetry of the Universe in the context of cold electroweak baryogenesis if the electroweak phase transition is delayed below the GeV scale. This can occur naturally if the Higgs couples to a O(100) GeV dilaton, as expected in some models where the Higgs is a pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson of a new strongly interacting sector at the TeV scale. The existence of such a second scalar resonance with a mass and properties similar to the Higgs boson will soon be tested at the LHC. In this context, the QCD axion would not only solve the strong CP problem, but also the matter antimatter asymmetry and dark matter.

CP violation and electroweak baryogenesis in the Standard Model

One of the major unresolved problems in current physics is understanding the origin of the observed asymmetry between matter and antimatter in the Universe. It has become a common lore to claim that the Standard Model of particle physics cannot produce sufficient asymmetry to explain the observation. Our results suggest that this conclusion can be alleviated in the so-called cold electroweak baryogenesis scenario. On the Standard Model side, we continue the program initiated by Smit eight years ago; one derives the effective CP-violating action for the Standard Model bosons and uses the resulting effective theory in numerical simulations. We address a disagreement between two previous computations performed effectively at zero temperature, and demonstrate that it is very important to include temperature effects properly. Our conclusion is that the cold electroweak baryogenesis scenario within the Standard Model is tightly constrained, yet producing enough baryon asymmetry using just known physics still seems possible.

Ensemble fermions for electroweak dynamics and the fermion preheating temperature

We refine the implementation of ensemble fermions for the electroweak sector of the Standard Model, introduced previously. We consider the behavior of different observables as the size of the ensemble is increased and show that the dynamics converges for ensemble sizes small enough that simulations of the entire electroweak sector become numerically tractable. We apply the method to the computation of the effective preheating temperature during a fast electroweak transition, relevant for Cold Electroweak Baryogenesis. We find that this temperature is never below 20 GeV, and this in combination with the early results convincingly rules out Standard Model CP-violation as the origin of the baryon asymmetry of the Universe.

On using cold baryogenesis to constrain the two-Higgs doublet model

We consider the creation of the cosmological baryon asymmetry in the Two Higgs Doublet Model. We imagine a situation where the masses of the five Higgs particles and the two Higgs vevs are constrained by collider experiments, and demonstrate how the requirement of successful baryogenesis can be used to further constrain the remaining 4-dimensional parameter space of the model. We numerically compute the asymmetry within the scenario of Cold Electroweak Baryogenesis, which is particularly straightforward to simulate reliably.

Cold electroweak baryogenesis in the two Higgs-doublet model

We perform the first investigation of cold electroweak baryogenesis in the two Higgs-doublet model (2HDM). The electroweak symmetry breaking transition is assumed to occur through a spinodal instability from a super-cooled initial state. We consider the creation of net Chern-Simons number, which through the axial anomaly is equivalent to baryon number. CP-violation is explicit in the scalar potential, but only in combination with P-violation is it possible for an asymmetry to be generated. This is introduced through the leading C- and P-breaking, but CP-invariant, term expected to arise upon integrating out the fermions in the theory. We perform real-time lattice simulations of the transition, and find the coefficient of this term required for successful bayogenesis.

Temperature Dependence of Standard ModelCPViolation

We analyze the temperature dependence of CP violation effects in the standard model by determining the effective action of its bosonic fields, obtained after integrating out the fermions from the theory and performing a covariant gradient expansion. We find nonvanishing CP violating terms starting at the sixth order of the expansion, albeit only in the C-odd-P-even sector, with coefficients that depend on quark masses, Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix elements, temperature and the magnitude of the Higgs field. The CP violating effects are observed to decrease rapidly with temperature, which has important implications for the generation of a matter-antimatter asymmetry in the early Universe. Our results suggest that the cold electroweak baryogenesis scenario may be viable within the standard model, provided the electroweak transition temperature is at most of order 1 GeV.

Standard modelCPviolation and cold electroweak baryogenesis

Using large scale real-time lattice simulations, we calculate the baryon asymmetry generated at a fast, cold electroweak symmetry breaking transition. CP-violation is provided by the leading effective bosonic term resulting from integrating out the fermions in the Minimal Standard Model at zero temperature, and performing a covariant gradient expansion [1]. This is an extension of the work presented in [2]. The numerical implementation is described in detail, and we address issues specifically related to using this CP-violating term in the context of Cold Electroweak Baryogenesis. The results support the conclusion of [2], that Standard Model CP-violation may be able to reproduce the observed baryon asymmetry in the Universe in the context of Cold Electroweak Baryogenesis.

Can the standard modelCPviolation near theWbags explain the cosmological baryonic asymmetry?

In the scenario of cold electroweak baryogenesis, oscillations of the Higgs field lead to metastable domains of unbroken phase where the Higgs field nearly vanishes. Those domains have also been identified with the $W\ensuremath{-}t\ensuremath{-}\overline{t}$ bags, a nontopological solitons made of large number ($\ensuremath{\sim}1000$) of gauge quanta and heavy (top and antitop) quarks. As real-time numerical studies had shown, sphalerons (topological transition events violating the baryon number) occur only inside those bags. In this work we estimate the amount of $CP$ violation in this scenario coming from the standard model, via the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) quark mixing matrix, resulting in top-minus-antitop difference of the population in the bags. Since these tops/antitops are recycled by sphalerons, this population difference leads directly to the baryonic asymmetry of the Universe. We look at the effect appearing in the 4th order in weak $W$ diagrams describing interference of different quark flavor contributions. We found that there are multiple cancellations of diagrams and clearly sign-definite effect appears only in the 6th-order expansion over flavor-dependent phases. We then estimate contributions to these diagrams in which weak interaction occurs (i) inside, (ii) near and (iii) far from the $W\ensuremath{-}t\ensuremath{-}\overline{t}$ b-bags, optimizing the contributions in each of them. We conclude that the second (near) scenario is the dominant one, producing $CP$ violation of the order of ${10}^{\ensuremath{-}10}$, in our crude estimates. Together with the baryon violation rate of about ${10}^{\ensuremath{-}2}$, previously demonstrated for this scenario, it puts the resulting asymmetry close to what is needed to explain the observed baryonic asymmetry in the Universe. Our answer also has a definite sign, which apparently seems to be the correct one.

Natural cold baryogenesis from strongly interacting electroweak symmetry breaking

The mechanism of ``cold electroweak baryogenesis'' has been so far unpopular because its proposal has relied on the ad-hoc assumption of a period of hybrid inflation at the electroweak scale with the Higgs acting as the waterfall field. We argue here that cold baryogenesis can be naturally realized without the need to introduce any slow-roll potential. Our point is that composite Higgs models where electroweak symmetry breaking arises via a strongly first-order phase transition provide a well-motivated framework for cold baryogenesis. In this case, reheating proceeds by bubble collisions and we argue that this can induce changes in Chern-Simons number, which in the presence of new sources of CP violation commonly lead to baryogenesis. We illustrate this mechanism using as a source of CP violation an effective dimension-six operator which is free from EDM constraints, another advantage of cold baryogenesis compared to the standard theory of electroweak baryogenesis. Our results are general as they do not rely on any particular UV completion but only on a stage of supercooling ended by a first-order phase transition in the evolution of the universe, which can be natural if there is nearly conformal dynamics at the TeV scale. Besides, baryon-number violation originates from the Standard Model only.

Fast electroweak symmetry breaking and cold electroweak baryogenesis

We construct a model for delayed electroweak symmetry breaking that takes place in a cold Universe with T << 100 GeVand which proceeds by a fast quench rather than by a conventional, slow, phase transition. This is achieved by coupling the Standard Model Higgs to an additional scalar field.We show that the quench transition can be made fast enough for successful Cold Electroweak Baryogenesis, while leaving known electroweak physics unchanged.

Simulations of Cold Electroweak Baryogenesis

We present real-time lattice simulations of Cold Electroweak Baryogenesis, in which the baryon asymmetry of the Universe is generated during tachyonic electroweak symmetry breaking at the end of inflation. In the minimal realisation of the model, only three parameters remain undetermined: the strength of CP-violation, the Higgs mass and the speed of the symmetry breaking quench. The dependence of the asymmetry on these parameters is studied.

Simulations of Cold Electroweak Baryogenesis: finite time quenches

The electroweak symmetry breaking transition may supply the appropriate out-of-equilibrium conditions for baryogenesis if it is triggered sufficiently fast. This can happen at the end of low-scale inflation, prompting baryogenesis to occur during tachyonic preheating of the Universe, when the potential energy of the inflaton is transfered into Standard Model particles. With the proper amount of CP-violation present, the observed baryon number asymmetry can be reproduced. Within this framework of Cold Electroweak Baryogenesis, we study the dependence of the generated baryon asymmetry on the speed of the quenching transition. We find that there is a separation between ``fast'' and ``slow'' quenches, which can be used to put bounds on the allowed Higgs-inflaton coupling. We also clarify the strong Higgs mass dependence of the asymmetry reported in a companion paper (hep-ph/0604263).

Simulations of cold electroweak baryogenesis: dependence on Higgs mass and strength of CP-violation

Cold electroweak baryogenesis was proposed as a scenario to bypass generic problems of electroweak baryogenesis within the Standard Model. In this scenario, baryogenesis takes place during an electroweak symmetry breaking transition, which is also responsible for preheating after inflation. In the simplest modelling of the scenario, only two parameters remain undetermined: The Higgs mass and the strength of CP violation. Using full real-time lattice simulations, we compute the dependence of the asymmetry on these parameters.

Chern-Simons and winding number in a tachyonic electroweak transition

We investigate the development of winding number and Chern-Simons number in a tachyonic transition in the SU(2) Higgs model, motivated by the scenario of cold electroweak baryogenesis. We find that localized configurations with approximately half-integer winding number, dubbed half-knots, play an important role in this process. When the Chern-Simons number adjusts locally to the winding number, the half-knots can stabilize and acquire half-integer Chern-Simons number as well. We present two examples from numerical simulations: one half-knot that stabilizes early and one that gives rise to a late sphaleron transition. We also study the winding number distribution after the transition and present new results on the development of the Chern-Simons susceptibility.