Fermion sea along the sphaleron barrier

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Abstract
We study the fermion Dirac sea along the minimal energy path between topologically distinct vacua in the electroweak theory. We follow in detail the interplay between the bound state and the continuum in the fermion creation and/or annihilation, as one passes from one vacuum to another. We calculate the quantum correction to the classical energy of the sphaleron barrier, arising from the fermion sea, and its contribution to the baryon number violation rate for nonzero temperatures. We find that the fermion fluctuations suppress that rate if the mass of the top quark is large enough.