Temperature Dependence of the Neutron Lifespan
Nuclear Theory
2018-05-18 v1 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
Plasma Physics
Abstract
Current precision big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) studies motivate us to revisit the neutron lifespan in the plasma medium of the early universe. The mechanism we explore is the Fermi-blocking of decay electrons and neutrinos by plasma. As result, neutrons live longer and we find a significant 6.4\% modification of neutron abundance in the BBN era arising from in plasma modification of the neutron lifetime. This effect can influence the final abundances of the light elements in BBN.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1805.06543,
title = {Temperature Dependence of the Neutron Lifespan},
author = {Cheng Tao Yang and Jeremiah Birrell and Johann Rafelski},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1805.06543},
year = {2018}
}
Comments
4 pages, 2 figures