Baryogenesis at the Electroweak Scale

Abstract

The generation of the baryon asymmetry of the universe is considered in the standard model of the electroweak theory with simple extensions of the Higgs sector. The propagation of quarks of masses up to about 5 GeV are considered, taking into account their markedly different dispersion relations due to propagation through the hot electroweak plasma. It is shown that the contribution of these lighter quarks to the baryon asymmetry can be comparable to that for the t quark considered earlier.