Protecting the Primordial Baryon Asymmetry From Erasure by Sphalerons

Abstract

If the baryon asymmetry of the universe was created at the GUT scale, sphalerons together with exotic sources of $(B-L)$-violation could have erased it, unless the latter satisfy stringent bounds. We elaborate on how the small Yukawa coupling of the electron drastically weakens previous estimates of these bounds.

Comments: 41 pp., 4 latex figures included and 3 uuencoded or postscript figures available by request, UMN-TH-1213-93