Microphysics of Gauge Vortices and Baryogenesis

Abstract

I give a brief overview of a novel mechanism for generating the baryon asymmetry of the universe at the electroweak scale. This scenario circumvents the need for a strongly first order electroweak phase transition by utilizing gauged topological solitons to realize the requisite departure from thermal equilibrium.

6 pages, RevTeX, Invited talk at ``Solitons'', Kingston, Ontario, Canada, July 20-25, 1997. To appear in the proceedings