Damping rates in the MSSM and electroweak baryogenesis

Abstract

We present an analysis of the thermalization rate of Higgsinos and winos based on the imaginary part of the two-point Green function in the {\it unbroken} phase of the MSSM. We use improved propagators including resummation of hard thermal loops and the thermalization rate is computed at the one-loop level in the high temperature approximation. We find that the damping is typically dominated by scattering with gauge bosons, resulting in a damping rate of about $\gamma_{\Ht}\simeq 0.025T$, $\gamma_{\Wt}\simeq 0.065T$. The contribution from scattering with scalars is relatively small. Implications for baryogenesis are also discussed.