Abstract
Non-perturbative electroweak effects, in thermal equilibrium in the early universe, have the potential to erase the baryon asymmetry of the universe, unless it is encoded in a B - L asymmetry, or in some "accidentally" conserved quantity. We first consider the possibility that the BAU may be regenerated from lepton flavour asymmetries even when initially B - L = 0. We show that provided some, but not all the lepton flavours are violated by ΔL ≠ 0 interactions in equilibrium, the BAU may be regenerated without lepton mass effects. We next examine the possibility of encoding the baryon asymmetry in a primordial asymmetry for the right-handed electron, which due to its weak Yukawa interaction only comes into chemical equilibrium as the sphalerons are falling out of equilibrium. This would also raise the possibility of preserving an initial baryon asymmetry when B - L = 0.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 118-124 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | Physics Letters B |
| Volume | 297 |
| Issue number | 1-2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 24 1992 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We wish to thank M. Luty and M. Voloshin for discussions. The work of BAC and SD was supported in part by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. The work of KAO was supported in part by DOE grant DE-AC02-83ER-40105, and by a Presidential Young Investigator Award. BAC and KAO would like to thank the CERN Theory Division for kind hospitality during part of this research.