Baryogenesis from Cosmic Strings at the Electroweak Scale

Abstract

We explore the viability of baryogenesis from light scalar decays after the electroweak phase transition. A minimal model of this kind is constructed with new CP violating interactions involving a heavy fourth family. The departure from thermal equilbrium must come from topological defects like cosmic strings, and we show that almost any mechanism for producing the cosmic strings at the electroweak scale results in a viable theory. Baryogenesis occurs in the fourth generation but the baryon number is later transported to the visible generations. This mechanism of indirect baryogenesis allows us to satisfy experimental limits on the proton lifetime while still having perturbative baryon number violation at low energies. The fourth family has very small mixing angles which opens the possibility of distinct observable signatures in collider experiments.