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  • Open Access

Evolution of the Primordial Axial Charge across Cosmic Times

A. Boyarsky1, V. Cheianov1, O. Ruchayskiy2, and O. Sobol3,4,*

  • 1Instituut-Lorentz for Theoretical Physics, Universiteit Leiden, Niels Bohrweg 2, 2333 CA Leiden, Netherlands
  • 2Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Blegdamsvej 17, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark
  • 3Institute of Physics, Laboratory for Particle Physics and Cosmology, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
  • 4Physics Faculty, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, 64/13, Volodymyrska Str., 01601 Kyiv, Ukraine

  • *oleksandr.sobol@epfl.ch
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Phys. Rev. Lett. 126, 021801 – Published 11 January, 2021

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.126.021801

Abstract

We investigate collisional decay of the axial charge in an electron-photon plasma at temperatures 10 MeV–100 GeV. We demonstrate that the decay rate of the axial charge is first order in the fine-structure constant Γflip∝αme2/T and thus orders of magnitude greater than the naive estimate which has been in use for decades. This counterintuitive result arises through infrared divergences regularized at high temperature by environmental effects. The decay of axial charge plays an important role in the problems of leptogenesis and cosmic magnetogenesis.

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Equilibration of the chiral asymmetry due to finite electron mass in electron-positron plasma

A. Boyarsky, V. Cheianov, O. Ruchayskiy, and O. Sobol
Phys. Rev. D 103, 013003 (2021)

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 126, 021801– Published 11 January, 2021
  • Received 1 August 2020
  • Revised 16 September 2020
  • Accepted 1 December 2020
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