Primordial Baryon Asymmetry and Sphalerons

Abstract

I show that a cosmological baryon asymmetry generated at the GUT scale is in general safe against washout due to sphalerons and generic $B$- or $L$-violating effects. This result is mainly due to the (almost) conserved number of right-handed electrons at high temperatures $T\text{gsim}\mathcal{O}(10)$ TeV, but also the mass corrections, in particular the thermal masses of leptons act as the protector of the primordial baryon asymmetry.

Comments: 4 pages, Latex, uses espcrc2.sty, Talk at the Conference ``Trends in Particle Astrophysics'' Stockholm, Sweden, Sept. 22-25, 1994.