Damping rates in the MSSM and electroweak baryogenesis

We present an analysis of the thermalization rate of Higgsinos and wines based on the imaginary part of the two-point Green function in the unbroken phase of the MSSM. We use improved propagators including resummation of hard thermal loops and the thermalization rate is computed at the one-loop level in the high temperature approximation. We find that the damping is typically dominated by scattering with gauge bosons, resulting in a damping rate of about gamma((H) over tilde)similar or equal to 0.025T, gamma((W) over tilde)similar or equal to 0.065T. The contribution from scattering with scalars is relatively small. Implications for baryogenesis are also discussed. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.