Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Fermion production in the background of Minkowski space classical solutions in spontaneously broken gauge theory

1995; American Physical Society; Volume: 51; Issue: 8 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1103/physrevd.51.4561

1538-4500

Edward Farhi, Jeffrey Goldstone, Sam Gutmann, Krishna Rajagopal, Robert Singleton,

Cosmology and Gravitation Theories

We investigate fermion production in the background of Minkowski space solutions to the equations of motion of $SU(2)$ gauge theory spontaneously broken via the Higgs mechanism. First, we attempt to evaluate the topological charge $Q$ of the solutions. We find that for solutions $Q$ is not well-defined as an integral over all space-time. Solutions can profitably be characterized by the (integer-valued) change in Higgs winding number $\Delta N_H$. We show that solutions which dissipate at early and late times and which have nonzero $\Delta N_H$ must have at least the sphaleron energy. We show that if we couple a quantized massive chiral fermion to a classical background given by a solution, the number of fermions produced is $\Delta N_H$, and is not related to $Q$.