English

Estimate of the primordial magnetic field helicity

Astrophysics 2009-11-06 v3 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

Electroweak baryogenesis proceeds via changes in the non-Abelian Chern-Simons number. It is argued that these changes generate a primordial magnetic field with left-handed helicity. The helicity density of the primordial magnetic field today is then estimated to be given by 102nb\sim 10^2 n_b where nb106n_b\sim 10^{-6} /cm3^3 is the present cosmological baryon number density. With certain assumptions about the inverse cascade we find that the field strength at recombination is 1013\sim 10^{-13} G on a comoving coherence scale 0.1\sim 0.1 pc.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0101261,
  title  = {Estimate of the primordial magnetic field helicity},
  author = {Tanmay Vachaspati},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0101261},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

Several improvements; version accepted for publication in PRL