English

The muon abundance in the primordial Universe

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2021-04-05 v2 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics Nuclear Theory

Abstract

Muon abundance is required for the understanding of several fundamental questions regarding properties of the primordial Universe. In this paper we evaluate the production and decay rates of muons in the cosmic plasma as a function of temperature. This allows us to determine when exactly the muon abundance disappears. When the Universe cools below the temperature kTdisappear4.135kT_\mathrm{disappear}\approx 4.135 MeV the muon decay rate overwhelms production rates and muons vanish quasi-instantaneously from the Universe. Interestingly, we show that at TdisappearT_\mathrm{disappear} the muon number is nearly equal to baryon abundance.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2103.07812,
  title  = {The muon abundance in the primordial Universe},
  author = {Jan Rafelski and Cheng Tao Yang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2103.07812},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

10 pages APPB, 3 figures, Prepared for the 60th anniversary of the Cracow School of Theoretical Physics; v2 in press: typos corrected and computational details improved