The Electroweak Sphaleron in a strong magnetic field

Abstract

In an external magnetic field, the energy of the electroweak sphaleron---representing the energy barrier to baryon and lepton number violation---decreases but remains nonzero until the upper Ambjorn-Olesen critical field strength set by the Higgs mass and the electric charge, where it vanishes. We demonstrate this by numerically computing the sphaleron configuration in the presence of an external magnetic field, over the full range of field strengths until the energy barrier vanishes. We discuss the implications for baryogenesis in the early universe, and the possibility of observing of baryon and lepton number violation in heavy-ion collisions.

arXiv comment8 pages, 5 figures; corrected numerical error in Higgs self coupling, added references and minor corrections

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• Electroweak Sphaleron in a Magnetic field
• Q-Balls in the presence of attractive force
• Strongly interacting matter in extreme magnetic fields
• Exploiting exotic LHC datasets for long-lived new particle searches
• Search for the baryon number and lepton number violating decays ${\tau }^{-}\to \Lambda {\pi }^{-}$ and ${\tau }^{-}\to \bar{\Lambda }{\pi }^{-}$ at Belle II