Baryon-number violation at the Superconducting Super Collider? Recent claims reexamined

Abstract

Recent instanton calculations suggest that baryon-number violation is unsuppressed at energies near 10 TeV. We show how to diagrammatically analyze corrections to the basic approximations. We find additional multiplicative contributions of $\exp (\pm \frac{\mathrm{const}}{{\alpha }_W})$ to the cross section at such energies which may keep the rate from becoming large. In addition, the $p_i·p_j$ structure of these corrections is problematic for recent techniques suggested for improving the instanton calculation and controlling corrections at high energy. Despite these corrections, the initial exponential growth of the cross section first obtained by Ringwald survives.