Baryogenesis

The Standard Model can incorporate baryogenesis, though the amount of net baryons (and leptons) thus created may not be sufficient to account for the present baryon asymmetry. This issue has not yet been determined decisively.

Baryogenesis within the Standard Model requires the electroweak symmetry breaking be a first-order phase transition, since otherwise sphalerons wipe off any baryon asymmetry that happened up to the phase transition, while later the amount of baryon non-conserving interactions is negligible.[9]

The phase transition domain wall breaks the P-symmetry spontaneously, allowing for CP-symmetry violating interactions to create C-asymmetry on both its sides: quarks tend to accumulate on the broken phase side of the domain wall, while anti-quarks tend to accumulate on its unbroken phase side. This happens as follows:[7]

Due to CP-symmetry violating electroweak interactions, some amplitudes involving quarks are not equal to the corresponding amplitudes involving anti-quarks, but rather have opposite phase (see CKM matrix and Kaon); since time reversal takes an amplitude to its complex conjugate, CPT-symmetry is conserved.

Though some of their amplitudes have opposite phases, both quarks and anti-quarks have positive energy, and hence acquire the same phase as they move in space-time. This phase also depends on their mass, which is identical but depends both on flavor and on the Higgs VEV which changes along the domain wall. Thus certain sums of amplitudes for quarks have different absolute values compared to those of anti-quarks. In all, quarks and anti-quarks may have different reflection and transmission probabilities through the domain wall, and it turns out that more quarks coming from the unbroken phase are transmitted compared to anti-quarks.

Thus there is a net baryonic flux through the domain wall. Due to sphaleron transitions, which are abundant in the unbroken phase, the net anti-baryonic content of the unbroken phase is wiped off as anti-baryons are transformed into leptons. However, sphalerons are rare enough in the broken phase as not to wipe off the excess of baryons there. In total, there is net creation of baryons (as well as leptons).

In this scenario, non-perturbative electroweak interactions (i.e. the sphaleron) are responsible for the B-violation, the perturbative electroweak Lagrangian is responsible for the CP-violation, and the domain wall is responsible for the lack of thermal equilibrium and the P-violation; together with the CP-violation it also creates a C-violation in each of its sides.

The challenges to the physics theories are then to explain how to produce this preference of matter over antimatter, and also the magnitude of this asymmetry. An important quantifier is the asymmetry parameter, naïvely given by

${\displaystyle \eta ={\frac {n_{B}-n_{\bar {B}}}{n_{\gamma }}}}$.

This quantity relates the overall number density difference between baryons and antibaryons (n_B and n_B, respectively) and the number density of cosmic background radiation photons n_γ.

According to the Big Bang model, matter decoupled from the cosmic background radiation (CBR) at a temperature of roughly 3000 kelvin, corresponding to an average kinetic energy of 3000 K / (10.08×10³ K/eV) = 0.3 eV. After the decoupling, the total number of CBR photons remains constant. Therefore, due to space-time expansion, the photon density decreases. The photon density at equilibrium temperature T per cubic centimeter, is given by

${\displaystyle n_{\gamma }={\frac {1}{\pi ^{2}}}{\left({\frac {k_{B}T}{\hbar c}}\right)}^{3}\int _{0}^{\infty }{\frac {x^{2}}{e^{x}-1}}\operatorname {d} x={\frac {2\zeta (3)}{\pi ^{2}}}{\left({\frac {k_{B}T}{\hbar c}}\right)}^{3}\approx 20.3\left({\frac {T}{1{\text{K}}}}\right)^{3}{\text{cm}}^{-3}}$,

with k_B as the Boltzmann constant, ħ as the Planck constant divided by 2π and c as the speed of light in vacuum, and ζ(3) as Apéry's constant. At the current CBR photon temperature of 2.725 K, this corresponds to a photon density n_γ of around 411 CBR photons per cubic centimeter.

Therefore, the asymmetry parameter η, as defined above, is not the "best" parameter. Instead, the preferred asymmetry parameter uses the entropy density s,

${\displaystyle \eta _{s}={\frac {n_{B}-n_{\bar {B}}}{s}}}$

because the entropy density of the universe remained reasonably constant throughout most of its evolution. The entropy density is

${\displaystyle s\ {\stackrel {\mathrm {def} }{=}}\ {\frac {\mathrm {entropy} }{\mathrm {volume} }}={\frac {p+\rho }{T}}={\frac {2\pi ^{2}}{45}}g_{\text{⁎}}(T)T^{3}}$

with p and ρ as the pressure and density from the energy density tensor T_μν, and g_⁎ as the effective number of degrees of freedom for "massless" particles at temperature T (in so far as mc² ≪ k_BT holds),

${\displaystyle g_{\text{⁎}}(T)=\sum _{\mathrm {i=bosons} }g_{i}{\left({\frac {T_{i}}{T}}\right)}^{3}+{\frac {7}{8}}\sum _{\mathrm {j=fermions} }g_{j}{\left({\frac {T_{j}}{T}}\right)}^{3}}$,

for bosons and fermions with g_i and g_j degrees of freedom at temperatures T_i and T_j respectively. At the present epoch, s = 7.04 n_γ.

• E. W. Kolb & M. S. Turner (1994). The Early Universe. Perseus Publishing. ISBN 978-0-201-62674-2.

• A. D. Dolgov (1997). "Baryogenesis, 30 Years After". Surveys in High Energy Physics. 13 (1–3): 83–117. arXiv:hep-ph/9707419. Bibcode:1998SHEP...13...83D. doi:10.1080/01422419808240874. S2CID 119499400.
• A. Riotto (1998). "Theories of Baryogenesis". High Energy Physics and Cosmology: 326. arXiv:hep-ph/9807454. Bibcode:1999hepc.conf..326R.
• M. Trodden (1999). "Electroweak Baryogenesis". Reviews of Modern Physics. 71 (5): 1463–1500. arXiv:hep-ph/9803479. Bibcode:1999RvMP...71.1463T. doi:10.1103/RevModPhys.71.1463. S2CID 17275359.