SPONTANEOUS ANNIHILATION OF HIGH-DENSITY MATTER IN THE ELECTROWEAK THEORY

Ln the presence of fermionic matter the topologically distinct vacua o f the standard model are metastable and can decay by tunneling through the sphaleron barrier. This process annihilates one fermion per doubl et due to the anomalous nonconservation of baryon and lepton currents and is accompanied by a production of gauge and Higgs bosons. We prese nt a numerical method to obtain local bounce solutions which minimize the Euclidean action in the space of all configurations connecting two adjacent topological sectors. These solutions determine the decay rat e and the configuration of the fields after the tunneling. We also fol low the real time evolution of this configuration and analyze the spec trum of the created bosons. If the matter density exceeds some critica l value, the exponentially suppressed tunneling triggers off an avalan che producing an enormous amount of bosons.