Supersymmetric Electroweak Phase Transition: Beyond Perturbation Theory

Abstract

We compute the three-dimensional effective action for the minimal supersymmetric standard model, which describes the light modes of the theory near the finite-temperature electroweak phase transition, keeping the one-loop corrections from the third generation quarks and squarks. Using the lattice results of Kajantie {\it et al.}\ for the phase transition in the same class of 3-D models, we find that the strength of the phase transition is sufficient for electroweak baryogenesis, in much broader regions of parameter space than have been indicated by purely perturbative analyses. In particular we find that, while small values of $\tanβ$ are favored, positive results persist even for arbitrarily large values of $\tanβ$ if the mass of the $A^0$ boson is between 40 and 120 GeV, a region of parameters which has not been previously identified as being favorable for electroweak baryogenesis.