Effect of reheating on electroweak baryogenesis

Abstract

The latent heat released during the expansion of bubbles in the electroweak phase transition reheats the plasma and causes the bubble growth to slow down. This decrease of the bubble wall velocity affects the result of electroweak baryogenesis. Since the efficiency of baryogenesis peaks for a wall velocity $\sim 10^{-2}$, the resulting baryon asymmetry can either be enhanced or suppressed, depending on the initial value of the wall velocity. We calculate the evolution of the phase transition taking into account the release of latent heat. We find that, although in the SM the baryon production is enhanced by this effect, in the MSSM it causes a suppression to the final baryon asymmetry.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures. References added. Revised version to be published in Phys.Rev.