Post--Sphaleron Baryogenesis

Abstract

We present a new mechanism for generating the baryon asymmetry of the universe directly in the decay of a singlet scalar field $S_r$ with a weak scale mass and a high dimensional baryon number violating coupling. Unlike most currently popular models, this mechanism, which becomes effective after the electroweak phase transition, does not rely on the sphalerons for inducing a nonzero baryon number. CP asymmetry in $S_r$ decay arises through loop diagrams involving the exchange of $W^\pm$ gauge bosons, and is suppressed by light quark masses, leading naturally to a value of $\eta_B \sim 10^{-10}$. We show that the simplest realization of this mechanism, which uses a six quark $\Delta B=2$ operator, predicts colored scalars accessible to the LHC, and neutron--antineutron oscillation within reach of the next generation experiments.