Diffusion and Debye Screening Near Expanding Domain Walls

Abstract

We study the effect of Debye screening of hypercharge when a net fermion number is reflected from a domain wall during a first order phase transition, which may be relevant for electroweak baryogenesis. We give a simple method for computing the effect of screening within the diffusion approximation, whose results are compatible with those of a more elaborate treatment based on the Boltzmann equation. Our formalism takes into account the differences in mobility of different particle species. We believe it is conceptually simpler than other accounts of screening that have appeared in this context. Somewhat surprisingly, we find that Debye screening can actually {\it enhance} electroweak baryogenesis by a modest factor ($\sim 2$).