Electroweak baryon number violation at finite temperature

We consider baryon and lepton number violating processes in the electroweak theory induced by gauge and Higgs fields passing the sphaleron solution at finite temperature. We show that for temperatures larger than 19 GeV the anomalous baryon and lepton number violating processes are suppressed by the Boltzmann factor exp(-βEsp), where Esp is the sphaleron energy, rather than by the instanton tunneling factor exp(-8π2/g2). We calculate the rate of baryon and lepton number violating processes at finite temperature and determine the freezing temperature of the anomalous processes in the early universe as a function of the Higgs mass. We compare the freezing temperature with the critical temperature of the electroweak phase transition infered from the one-loop finite-temperature effective potential. We obtain a critical Higgs mass of the order of 100 GeV, slightly depending on the top mass and the magnitude of the pre-exponential factor in the rate of the B non-conservation, above which the anomalous processes are certainly in equilibrium after the electroweak phase transition. Assuming that the temperature-dependence of the sphaleron energy is given by that found from the one-loop finite-temperature effective potential, this critical Higgs mass is lowered to a value of the order of 50 GeV. (orig.)