Diffusion and Debye Screening Near Expanding Domain Walls

We study the effect of Debye screening of hypercharge when a net fermion number is reflected from a domain wall during a first order phase transition, which may be relevant for electroweak baryogenesis. We give a simple method for computing the effect of screening within the diffusion approximation, whose results are compatible with those of a more elaborate treatment based on the Boltzmann equation. Our formalism takes into account the differences in mobility of different particle species. We believe it is conceptually simpler than other accounts of screening that have appeared in this context. Somewhat surprisingly, we find that Debye screening can actually {\it enhance} electroweak baryogenesis by a modest factor ($\sim 2$).Comment: 11 pp. latex, uses epsf.tex, 1 uuencoded figur

Evolution of column density distributions within Orion~A

We compare the structure of star-forming molecular clouds in different regions of Orion A to determine how the column density probability distribution function (N-PDF) varies with environmental conditions such as the fraction of young protostars. A correlation between the N-PDF slope and Class 0 protostar fraction has been previously observed in a low-mass star-formation region (Perseus) by Sadavoy; here we test if a similar correlation is observed in a high-mass star-forming region. We use Herschel data to derive a column density map of Orion A. We use the Herschel Orion Protostar Survey catalog for accurate identification and classification of the Orion A young stellar object (YSO) content, including the short-lived Class 0 protostars (with a $\sim$ 0.14 Myr lifetime). We divide Orion A into eight independent 13.5 pc$^2$ regions; in each region we fit the N-PDF distribution with a power-law, and we measure the fraction of Class 0 protostars. We use a maximum likelihood method to measure the N-PDF power-law index without binning. We find that the Class 0 fraction is higher in regions with flatter column density distributions. We test the effects of incompleteness, YSO misclassification, resolution, and pixel-scale. We show that these effects cannot account for the observed trend. Our observations demonstrate an association between the slope of the power-law N-PDF and the Class 0 fractions within Orion A. Various interpretations are discussed including timescales based on the Class 0 protostar fraction assuming a constant star-formation rate. The observed relation suggests that the N-PDF can be related to an "evolutionary state" of the gas. If universal, such a relation permits an evaluation of the evolutionary state from the N-PDF power-law index at much greater distances than those accesible with protostar counts. (abridged)Comment: A&A Letter, accepte

Supersymmetric Electroweak Phase Transition: Dimensional Reduction versus Effective Potential

We compare two methods of analyzing the finite-temperature electroweak phase transition in the minimal supersymmetric standard model: the traditional effective potential (EP) approach, and the more recently advocated procedure of dimensional reduction (DR). The latter tries to avoid the infrared instabilities of the former by matching the full theory to an effective theory that has been studied on the lattice. We point out a limitation of DR that caused a large apparent disagreement with the effective potential results in our previous work. We also incorporate wave function renormalization into the EP, which is shown to decrease the strength of the phase transition. In the regions of parameter space where both methods are expected to be valid, they give similar results, except that the EP is significantly more restrictive than DR for the range of baryogenesis-allowed values of $\tan\beta$, $m_h$, the critical temperature, and the up-squark mass parameter $m_U$. In contrast, the DR results are consistent with 2\lsim\tan\beta\lsim 4, $m_h<80$ GeV, and $m_U$ sufficiently large to have universality of the squark soft-breaking masses at the GUT scale, in a small region of parameter space. We suggest that the differences between DR and EP are due to higher-order perturbative corrections rather than infrared effects.Comment: 19 pages, Latex, 7 figures, uses epsf.te

Supersymmetric Electroweak Baryogenesis in the WKB approximation

We calculate the baryon asymmetry generated at the electroweak phase transition in the minimal supersymmetric standard model, treating the particles in a WKB approximation in the bubble wall background. A set of diffusion equations for the particle species relevant to baryon generation, including source terms arising from the CP violation associated with the complex phase $\delta$ of the $\mu$ parameter, are derived from Boltzmann equations, and solved. The conclusion is that $\delta$ must be \gsim 0.1 to generate a baryon asymmetry consistent with nucleosynthesis. We compare our results to several other recent computations of the effect, arguing that some are overestimates.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figure, corrected some criticisms of hep-ph/9702409; to appear in Phys. Lett.

Supersymmetric Electroweak Baryogenesis

We re-examine the generation of the baryon asymmetry in the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM) during the electroweak phase transition. We find that the dominant source for baryogenesis arises from the chargino sector. The CP-violation comes from the complex phase in the mu parameter, which provides CP-odd contributions to the particle dispersion relations. This leads to different accelerations for particles and antiparticles in the wall region which, combined with diffusion, leads to the separation of Higgsinos and their antiparticles in the front of the wall. These asymmetries get transported to produce perturbations in the left-handed chiral quarks, which then drive sphaleron interactions to create the baryon asymmetry. We present a complete derivation of the semiclassical WKB formalism, including the chargino dispersion relations and a self-consistent derivation of the diffusion equations starting from semiclassical Boltzmann equations for WKB-excitations. We stress the advantages of treating the transport equations in terms of the manifestly gauge invariant physical energy and kinetic momentum, rather than in the gauge variant canonical variables used in previous treatments. We show that a large enough baryon asymmetry can be created for the phase of the complex mu parameter as small as ~ 0.001, which is consistent with bounds from the neutron electric dipole moment.Comment: 54 pages, 3 figure

On the stability of spherically symmetric spacetimes in metric f(R) gravity

We consider stability properties of spherically symmetric spacetimes of stars in metric f(R) gravity. We stress that these not only depend on the particular model, but also on the specific physical configuration. Typically configurations giving the desired $\gamma_{\rm PPN} \approx 1$ are strongly constrained, while those corresponding to $\gamma_{\rm PPN} \approx 1/2$ are less affected. Furthermore, even when the former are found strictly stable in time, the domain of acceptable static spherical solutions typically shrinks to a point in the phase space. Unless a physical reason to prefer such a particular configuration can be found, this poses a naturalness problem for the currently known metric f(R) models for accelerating expansion of the Universe.Comment: Published version, 9 pages, 3 figure