Cosmic ray air showers from sphalerons
arXiv:1602.00647 · doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2016.08.030
Abstract
The discovery of the Higgs boson marks a key ingredient to establish the electroweak structure of the Standard Model. Its non-abelian gauge structure gives rise to, yet unobserved, non-perturbative baryon and lepton number violating processes. We propose to use cosmic ray air showers, as measured at the Pierre Auger Observatory, to set a limit on the hadronic production cross section of sphalerons. We identify several observables to discriminate between sphaleron and QCD induced air showers.
6 pages, 7 figures