ELECTROWEAK SPHALERON FOR EFFECTIVE THEORY IN THE LIMIT OF LARGE HIGGS-BOSON MASS

Theoretical arguments suggest that the Higgs sector of the standard model is an effective theory. We parametrize the new physics by means of an effective Lagrangian technique and study its effect on the energy of the electroweak sphaleron. We find that in the presence of a certain class of higher dimension operators the sphaleron energy becomes arbitrarily large as the Higgs boson mass mH increases. The physical meaning of this result and its implications to electroweak baryogenesis in the dynamical symmetry-breaking models are discussed. © 1995 The American Physical Society.