Fermion number violation in heavy fermion decay

Abstract

The presence of a heavy fermion doublet of fourth generation in the standard model would lead to a anomalous decay with fermion number non-conservation. The anomalous decay path in the background of the electroweak instanton is demonstrated by numerical calculation. If the mass of fermion exceeds the critical value $m_f^{\rm cr}$=9.2 TeV (for $M_H=M_W$), it is shown that there exists the rapid anomalous decay of the heavy fermion in semi-classical approximation. The dependence of the critical fermion mass on the Higgs mass is also presented.