The sphaleron rate at the electroweak crossover with 125 GeV Higgs mass

TL;DR

This paper measures the sphaleron rate in the Standard Model with a 125 GeV Higgs, providing insights into baryon number violation during the electroweak crossover relevant for baryogenesis.

Contribution

It presents the first lattice simulation of the sphaleron rate at the physical Higgs mass across the electroweak crossover.

Findings

Sphaleron rate is exponentially suppressed below the crossover.

Provides temperature-dependent sphaleron rate data.

Implications for baryogenesis models.

Abstract

We measure the sphaleron rate with the physical parameters of the Standard Model. In particular, we plug into the calculations the recently found Higgs mass m_H = 125 GeV. The sphaleron rate tells us about the efficiency of baryon number violation through sphaleron transitions. These occur above the electroweak scale of 100 GeV and get exponentially suppressed at temperatures substantially below the electroweak crossover. The sphaleron rate enters computations of Baryogenesis via Leptogenesis, where it converts non-zero lepton number into non-zero baryon number. We simulate the effective electroweak theory on the lattice with multicanonical and real-time methods to calculate the sphaleron rate as a function of temperature through the electroweak crossover.