Fermion Back-Reaction and the Sphaleron

Abstract

Using a simple model, a new sphaleron solution which incorporates finite fermionic density effects is obtained. The main result is that the height of the potential barrier (sphaleron energy) decreases as the fermion density increases. This suggests that the rate of sphaleron-induced transitions increases when the fermionic density increases. However the rate increase is not expected to change significantly the predictions from the standard sphaleron-induced baryogenesis scenarios.