Inflaton-induced sphaleron transitions

Abstract

It has recently been proposed that the production of long wavelength Higgs and gauge configurations via parametric resonance at the end of inflation may give rise to the required baryon asymmetry at the electroweak scale. We show that the stability of the inflaton oscillations, long after the production of Higgs modes, keeps driving the sphaleron transitions, which then become strongly correlated to the inflaton oscillations. In models where the CP-violation operator is related to time variations of the Higgs field, these correlations immediately lead to an efficient generation of baryons that are not washed out after the resonance.