Electrically Charged Sphalerons

Abstract

We investigate the possibility that the Higgs sector of the Weinberg-Salam model admits the existence of electrically charged, sphaleron states. Evidence is provided through an asymptotic and numerical perturbative analysis about the uncharged sphaleron. By introducing a toy model in two dimensions we demonstrate that such electrically charged, unstable states can exist. Crucially, they can have a comparable mass to their uncharged counterparts and so may also play a role in electroweak baryogenesis, by opening up new channels for baryon number violating processes.