Claudio Rebbi
Department of Physics and Center for Computational Science
Boston University
June 1997
Based on research by:
G.F. Bonini, C. Rebbi Boston University
S. Habib, E. Mottola, LANL
R.Singleton, Jr. University of Washington
P.Tinyakov INR, Moscow
The states of the electroweak theory are characterized by a topological number. Processes which change topology give origin to baryon number violation.
The animations below illustrate the semiclassical description of a collision process. The flux of incoming particles is represented by the imploding wave, the outgoing particles by the exploding wave. The phase of the complex field is color coded. A rainbow pattern indicates that the phase winds around the unit circle and that the state has non-trivial topology.
Video Sequence
Sequence 1:
Collision with an energy barely above the sphaleron barrier (E_sph) which separates states of different topology.
The topology changes.
Sequence 2:
Collision with energy larger than E_sph .
No change of topology.
Sequence 3:
Collision with E > E_sph.
Topology change and reduced incoming particle number.
Sequence 4:
Collision with energy below the sphaleron barrier.
No change of topology.
Sequence 5:
Collision with E < E_sph .
The evolution is continued along the imaginary time axis.
Change of topology occurs through tunneling.
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