ELECTRICALLY CHARGED SPHALERONS

We investigate the possibility that the Higgs sector of the Weinberg-S alam model admits the existence of electrically charged, sphaleron sta tes. Evidence is provided through an asymptotic and numerical perturba tive analysis about the uncharged sphaleron. By introducing a toy mode l in two dimensions we demonstrate that such electrically charged, uns table states can exist. Crucially, they can have a comparable mass to their uncharged counterparts and so may also play a role in electrowea k baryogenesis, by opening up new channels for baryon number violating processes.