Baryon Number Non-Conservation and the Topology of Gauge Fields

Abstract

An introduction to the subject of baryon number non-conservation in the electroweak theory at high temperatures or energies is followed by a summary of our discovery of an infinite surface of sphaleron-like configurations which play a key role in baryon-number non-conserving transitions in a hot electroweak plasma.

Comments: Talk given by Ola Tornkvist, to appear in the proceedings of the meeting of the American Physical Society, Division of Particles and Fields (DPF 96) in Minneapolis, Minnesota, August 10-15, 1996. Plain latex, 6 pages