Seminar

Physical parameters of the electroweak crossover

By
Michela D'Onofrio (Helsinski U)
Date
Place
IFAE seminar room
seminar ICCUB
We use large-scale lattice simulations to compute the rate of baryon number violating processes (the sphaleron rate), the Higgs field expectation value, and the critical temperature in the Standard Model across the electroweak phase transition temperature. While there is no true phase transition between the high-temperature symmetric phase and the low-temperature broken phase, the crossover is sharply defined. We also found out the freeze-out temperature in the early Universe, where the Hubble rate wins over the baryon number violation rate. In addition to being intrinsic properties of the Minimal Standard Model, these results provide input for leptogenesis calculations, in particular for models with electroweak scale leptons. Our calculation of the sphaleron rate also provides a bench mark for future computations in extensions of the Standard Model.