Supersymmetric electroweak baryogenesis, nonequilibrium field theory and quantum Boltzmann equations

Abstract

The closed time-path (CTP) formalism is a powerful Green's function formulation to describe nonequilibrium phenomena in field theory and it leads to a complete nonequilibrium quantum kinetic theory. In this paper we make use of the CTP formalism to write down a set of quantum Boltzmann equations describing the local number density asymmetries of the particles involved in supersymmetric electroweak baryogenesis. These diffusion equations automatically and self-consistently incorporate the CP-violating sources which fuel baryogenesis when transport properties allow the CP-violating charges to diffuse in front of the bubble wall separating the broken from the unbroken phase at the electroweak phase transition. This is a significant improvement with respect to recent approaches where the CP-violating sources are inserted by hand into the diffusion equations. Furthermore, the CP-violating sources and the particle number changing interactions manifest ``memory'' effects which are typical of the quantum transp ort theory and are not present in the classical approach. The slowdown of the relaxation processes may keep the system out of equilibrium for longer times and therefore enhance the final baryon asymmetry. We also stress that the classical approximation is not adequate to describe the quantum interference nature of CP-violation and that a quantum approach should be adopted to compute the sources since they are most easily built up by the transmission of low momentum particles.