Related papers: Tritium as an Anthropic Probe
Lithium abundance derived in metal-poor main sequence stars is about three times lower than the value of primordial Li predicted by the standard Big Bang nucleosynthesis when the baryon density is taken from the CMB or the deuterium…
Deuterium is created during Big Bang Nucleosynthesis, and, in contrast to the other light stable nuclei, can only be destroyed thereafter by fusion in stellar interiors. In this paper we study the cosmic evolution of the deuterium abundance…
We analyze the influence of decaying sterile neutrinos with the masses in the range 1-140 MeV on the primordial Helium-4 abundance, explicitly solving the Boltzmann equations for all particle species, taking into account neutrino flavour…
Motivated by the possibility that the laws of physics could be different in other regions of space-time, we consider nuclear processes in universes where the weak interaction is either stronger or weaker than observed. We focus on the…
High levels of deuterium fraction in N$_2$H$^+$ are observed in some pre-stellar cores. Single-zone chemical models find that the timescale required to reach observed values ($D_{\rm frac}^{{\rm N}_2{\rm H}^+} \equiv {\rm N}_2{\rm D}^+/{\rm…
To better understand the potential habitability of planets orbiting brown dwarfs, this work presents a new set of equilibrium temperature evolution tracks. Unlike most previous work that relied on analytic scaling relationships for brown…
A variation of the fundamental constants is expected to affect the thermonuclear rates important for stellar nucleosynthesis. In particular, because of the very small resonant energies of Be8 and C12, the triple $\alpha$ process is…
On the basis of arguments from galactic chemical evolution we suggest that the recent observations of D/H vs. metallicity in several high redshift absorbers are best understood if the primordial D value is in the range 2-3 10$^{-5}$. This…
Abundance measurements of the light elements lithium, beryllium, and boron are playing an increasingly important role in the study of stellar physics. Because these elements are easily destroyed in stars at temperatures 2--4 million K, the…
The comparison of cosmic abundances of the light elements with the density of baryonic stars and gas in the universe today provides a critical test of big bang theory and a powerful probe of the nature of dark matter. A new technique allows…
To constrain the universe before recombination (380000 years after the Big Bang), we mostly rely on the measurements of the primordial abundances that indicate the first insight into the thermal history of the universe. The first production…
Providing stable and clean energy sources is a necessity for the increasing demands of humanity. Energy produced by fusion reactions, in particular in tokamaks, is a promising path towards that goal. However, there is little experience with…
We examine galactic chemical evolution models which reproduce the present-day and pre-solar values of deuterium starting with a primordial value which is consistent with a baryon-to-photon ratio of $3 \times 10^{-10}$. We consider various…
The light relic density affects the thermal and expansion history of the early Universe leaving a number of observable imprints. We focus on the primordial abundances of light elements produced during the process of Big Bang nucleosynthesis…
Tritium beta-decay is the most promising approach to measure the absolute masses of active light neutrinos in the laboratory and in a model-independent fashion. The development of Cyclotron Radiation Emission Spectroscopy techniques and the…
We discuss a direct test of the relation of time and energy in the very long-lived decay of tritium (H3) (meanlife \tau ~ 18 yrs) with the width \Gamma ~ 10^{-24} eV [set by the time-energy uncertainty (TEU)], using the newfound possibility…
We present an analytic calculation of the thermonuclear depletion of the light elements lithium, beryllium, and boron in fully convective, low-mass stars. Under the presumption that the pre--main-sequence star is always fully mixed during…
Tritium, predominantly produced through spallation reactions caused by cosmic ray interactions, is a significant radioactive background for silicon-based rare event detection experiments, such as dark matter searches. We have investigated…
The deuterium abundances inferred from observations of the interstellar medium within 1-2 kpc of the Sun range over a factor of three and the corresponding oxygen abundances show an even larger dispersion. While the lower D (and O)…
We have investigated the abundance anomalies of lithium for stars with planets in the temperature range of 5600--5900 K reported by Israelian and coworkers, as compared to 20 normal stars at the same temperature and metallicity ranges. Our…