Approximate computation of the small-fluctuation determinant around a sphaleron
Physical review. D. Particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology/Physical review. D. Particles and fields1990Vol. 41(2), pp. 647–660
Citations Over TimeTop 10% of 1990 papers
Abstract
We compute, in the high-temperature limit, the determinant of small fluctuations around the sphaleron configuration of electroweak theory using the approximate method of Diakonov, Petrov, and Yung. For the ratio $\frac{\ensuremath{\lambda}}{{g}^{2}}$ of scalar four-point coupling $\ensuremath{\lambda}$ to gauge coupling ${g}^{2}$ near unity, we find that the determinant is of order 1 in agreement with previous computations. For $\frac{\ensuremath{\lambda}}{{g}^{2}}$ large corresponding to a strongly coupled Higgs phase, or for $\frac{\ensuremath{\lambda}}{{g}^{2}}$ very small tending to the Coleman-Weinberg limit, we find that the determinant strongly suppresses the rate of baryon-number-changing processes.