Do We Understand the Sphaleron Rate?

Abstract

I begin by answering a different question, ``Do we know the sphaleron rate?'' and conclude that we do. Then I discuss a crude but purely analytic picture which provides an estimate of the sphaleron rate within the context of Bodeker's effective theory. The estimate, which comes surprisingly close to the numerically determined sphaleron rate, gives a physical picture of baryon number violation in the hot phase, and provides a conjecture of the Nc dependence of the sphaleron rate in SU(Nc) gauge theory.