Decoupling in Non-Perturbative Background Fields: the Thermal Sphaleron

Abstract

Standard decoupling of heavy fermions may fail when there are non-perturbative variations in a scalar field which gives masses to the fermions. One situation of phenomenological relevance is the case of sphalerons in the presence of fermions at finite temperatures. The free energy of a simple model is determined using a non-perturbative technique to study the effect of fermions on the scalar field. The effects of quantum and thermal fermionic fluctuations on the free energy of the thermal sphaleron are calculated, including contributions from the gradients of the scalar field to all orders.

31 pages (2 figures available upon request), UM-93-02, JHU-TIPAC 930001

References in corpus (2)

• Decoupling a Fermion Whose Mass Comes from a Yukawa Coupling: Nonperturbative Considerations
• Quantum Kinks: Solitons at Strong Coupling

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• Baryogenesis and gravitational waves in the Zee-Babu Model
• Dual electroweak phase transition in the two-Higgs-doublet model with the $S_3$ discrete symmetry
• Sphaleron Transition Rate in Presence of Dynamical Fermions
• Sphaleron and gravitational wave with the Higgs-Dilaton potential in the Standard Model Two-Time Physics
• Twin electroweak bubble nucleation and gravitational wave under the $S_3$ symmetry of two-Higgs-doublet model