We consider origins of the baryon asymmetry which we observe today. We review the progress of electroweak-scale baryogenesis, and show a new mechanism, string-scale baryogenesis.
Conventional scenarios of electroweak (EW) baryogenesis are strongly constrained by experimental searches for CP violation beyond the SM. We propose an alternative scenario where the EW phase transition and baryogenesis occur at temperatures of the order of a new physics threshold $Lambda$ far above the Fermi scale, say, in the $100-1000$ TeV range. This way the needed new sources of CP-violation, together with possible associated flavor-violating effects, decouple from low energy observables. The key ingredient is a new CP- and flavor-conserving sector at the Fermi scale that ensures the EW symmetry remains broken and sphalerons suppressed at all temperatures below $Lambda$. We analyze a minimal incarnation based on a linear $O(N)$ model. We identify a specific large-$N$ limit where the effects of the new sector are vanishingly small at zero temperature while being significant at finite temperature. This crucially helps the construction of realistic models. A number of accidental factors, ultimately related to the size of the relevant SM couplings, force $N$ to be above $sim 100$. Such a large $N$ may seem bizarre, but it does affect the simplicity of the model and in fact it allows us to carry out a consistent re-summation of the leading contributions to the thermal effective potential. Extensions of the SM Higgs sector can be compatible with smaller values $Nsim 20-30$. Collider signatures are all parametrically suppressed by inverse powers of $N$ and may be challenging to probe, but present constraints from direct dark matter searches cannot be accommodated in the minimal model. We discuss various extensions that satisfy all current bounds. One of these involves a new gauge force confining at scales between $sim1$ GeV and the weak scale.
We investigate if the CP violation necessary for successful electroweak baryogenesis may be sourced by the neutrino Yukawa couplings. In particular, we consider an electroweak scale Seesaw realization with sizable Yukawas where the new neutrino singlets form (pseudo)-Dirac pairs, as in the linear or inverse Seesaw variants. We find that the baryon asymmetry obtained strongly depends on how the neutrino masses vary within the bubble walls. Moreover, we also find that flavour effects critically impact the final asymmetry obtained and that, taking them into account, the observed value may be obtained in some regions of the parameter space. This source of CP violation naturally avoids the strong constraints from electric dipole moments and links the origin of the baryon asymmetry of the Universe with the mechanism underlying neutrino masses. Interestingly, the mixing of the active and heavy neutrinos needs to be sizable and could be probed at the LHC or future collider experiments.
We analyze the quantum transport equations for supersymmetric electroweak baryogenesis including previously neglected bottom and tau Yukawa interactions and show that they imply the presence of a previously unrecognized dependence of the cosmic baryon asymmetry on the spectrum of third generation quark and lepton superpartners. For fixed values of the CP-violating phases in the supersymmetric theory, the baryon asymmetry can vary in both magnitude and sign as a result of the squark and slepton mass dependence. For light, right-handed top and bottom quark superpartners, the baryon number creation can be driven primarily by interactions involving third generation leptons and their superpartners.
The origin of the matter-antimatter asymmetry of the universe remains one of the outstanding questions yet to be answered by modern cosmology and also one of only a handful of problems where the need of a larger number of degrees of freedom than those contained in the standard model (SM) is better illustrated. An appealing scenario for the generation of baryon number is the electroweak phase transition that took place when the temperature of the universe was about 100 GeV. Though in the minimal version of the SM, and without considering the interaction of the SM particles with additional degrees of freedom, this scenario has been ruled out given the current bounds for the Higgs mass, this still remains an open possibility in supersymmetric extensions of the SM. In recent years it has also been realized that large scale magnetic fields could be of primordial origin. A natural question is what effect, if any, these fields could have played during the electroweak phase transition in connection to the generation of baryon number. Prior to the electroweak symmetry breaking, the magnetic modes able to propagate for large distances belonged to the U(1) group of hypercharge and hence receive the name of hypermagnetic fields. In this contribution, we summarize recent work aimed to explore the effects that these fields could have introduced during a first order electroweak phase transition. In particular, we show how these fields induce a CP asymmetric scattering of fermions off the true vacuum bubbles nucleated during the phase transition. The segregated axial charge acts as a seed for the generation of baryon number. We conclude by mentioning possible research venues to further explore the effects of large scale magnetic fields for the generation of the baryon asymmetry.
We derive the kinetic equation for fermions and antifermions interacting with a planar Higgs bubble wall during the electroweak phase transition using the `evenisation procedure. Equations of motion in a relativistic quantum theory do not mirror classical relations unless one uses evenised operators. We give a brief introduction to evenisation and then use the evenised Heisenberg equations of motion to obtain the velocity and force for the particles in the presence of the Higgs bubble wall. Keeping quantum contributions to $O(hbar)$ in the equations of motion we obtain the semi-classical force obtained earlier by other techniques.