Related papers: Are nontopological strings produced at the electro…
We propose a new mechanism to generate baryons. Electroweak strings produced at the electroweak phase transition will introduce anomalous currents through interactions of the strings with the background electromagnetic field and through…
We study the scenario of electroweak baryogenesis mediated by nonsuperconducting cosmic strings. This idea relies upon electroweak symmetry being restored in a region around the core of the topological defect so that, within this region,…
We review recent simulations of the formation of a particular class of non-topological defects known as semilocal strings during a phase transition. Semilocal strings have properties that are intermediate between topological cosmic strings…
If stable electroweak strings are copiously produced during the electroweak phase transition, they may contribute significantly to the presently observed baryon to entropy ratio of the Universe. This analysis establishes the feasibility of…
Electroweak baryogenesis has become a topic of much recent activity [1]. Here we discuss a new scenario which has the advantage of being insensitive to the order of the electroweak phase transition. We briefly review a mechanism [2] using…
If stable electroweak strings are copiously produced during the electroweak phase transition, they may contribute significantly to the presently observed baryon to entropy ratio of the universe. This analysis establishes the feasibility of…
We describe electroweak strings and their ability to carry Chern-Simons number. Certain string configurations, for any $\theta_W$, carry Chern-Simons number equal to that of the sphaleron and we conjecture that such strings are ``extended…
In the defect-mediated electroweak baryogenesis scenario, baryons are produced in well separated regions of space. It is shown that between the electroweak phase transition at a temperature of $T \sim 100 {\rm GeV}$ and the end of…
The electroweak symmetry is unbroken in the core of cosmic strings originating from a symmetry breaking at an energy higher than the electroweak scale $\eta_{EW}$. The dynamics of such strings may generate a baryon asymmetry below the…
I report on a critical analysis of the scenario of electroweak baryogenesis mediated by nonsuperconducting cosmic strings. This mechanism relies upon electroweak symmetry restoration in a region around cosmic strings, where sphalerons would…
In the context of electroweak strings, the baryon number anomaly equation may be reinterpreted as a conservation law for baryon number minus helicity. Since the helicity is a sum of the link and twist numbers, linked or twisted loops of…
We review a class of non-topological defects in the standard electroweak model, and their implications. Starting with the semilocal string, which provides a counterexample to many well known properties of topological vortices, we discuss…
We investigate whether baryogenesis is possible at a second order electroweak phase transition. We find that under rather general conditions, the departure from thermal equilibrium is suppressed by the expansion rate of the Universe, and…
The Ginzburg temperature has historically been proposed as the energy scale of formation of topological defects at a second order symmetry breaking phase transition. More recently alternative proposals which compute the time of formation of…
It now seems plausible that the observed baryon asymmetry may have been produced at the electroweak phase transition. We review the considerations which lead to this conclusion, focusing on the obstacles to making reliable estimates. These…
We explore the viability of baryogenesis from light scalar decays after the electroweak phase transition. A minimal model of this kind is constructed with new CP violating interactions involving a heavy fourth family. The departure from…
We consider the baryon number generation by charge transport mechanism in the electroweak phase transition taking properly into account thermal fluxes through the wall separating true and false vacuum in the spatial space. We show that the…
If cosmic strings are present at the electroweak phase transition, they can act as seeds on which bubbles of true vacuum nucleate. We explore the nature of such a phase transition, in particular the wall velocity and thickness of the…
We consider the presence of cosmic string induced density fluctuations in the universe at temperatures below the electroweak phase transition temperature. Resulting temperature fluctuations can restore the electroweak symmetry locally,…
We investigate the stability of the electroweak Z-string at high temperatures. Our results show that while finite temperature corrections can improve the stability of the Z-string, their effect is not strong enough to stabilize the Z-string…