1:30 pm VIA ZOOM
Baryogenesis via gauge field production from a relaxing Higgs, Benedict von Harling, IFAE Barcelona
In this talk, I will discuss how the baryon asymmetry of the universe can be explained in models where the Higgs couples to the Chern-Simons term of the hypercharge group and is away from the late-time minimum of its potential during inflation. The Higgs then relaxes toward this minimum once inflation ends which leads to the production of (hyper)magnetic helicity. I will discuss conditions under which this helicity can be approximately conserved during its joint evolution with the thermal plasma. At the electroweak phase transition the helicity is then converted into a baryon asymmetry by virtue of the chiral anomaly in the standard model. I will present a simple model which realizes this mechanism and show that the observed baryon asymmetry of the universe can be reproduced.