Valley Bifurcation in an $O(3)$ $\sigma$ Model: Implications for High-Energy Baryon Number Violation

The valley method for computing the total high-energy anomalous cross section $S_{anom}$ is the extension of the optical theorem to the case of instanton-antiinstanton backgrounds. As a toy model for baryon number violation in Electroweak theory, we consider a version of the $O(3)$ $\sigma$ model in which the conformal invariance is broken perturbatively. We show that at a critical energy the saddle-point values of the instanton size and instanton-antiinstanton separation bifurcate into complex conjugate pairs. This nonanalytic behavior signals the breakdown of the valley method at an energy where $S_{anom}$ is still exponentially suppressed. (Figures replaced 5/3/93).