Squarks and sphalerons

Abstract

Electric charge and color breaking minima along third generation squark directions do appear in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model for particular regions of the corresponding supersymmetric parameters $A_t$, $\mu$, $\tan\beta$, $m_Q^2$ and $m_U^2$. We have studied possible instabilities of electroweak sphalerons along non-trivial squark configurations. We have found that instabilities along the latter lie in the region of parameter space where the electroweak minimum is not the global one. Thus charge and color conservation imply that the standard electroweak sphaleron is not destabilized along squark directions.