Related papers: Universes without the Weak Force: Astrophysical Pr…
Recent observations of neutron-star properties, in particular the recent detection of gravitational waves emitted from binary neutron stars, GW 170817, open the way to put strong constraints on nuclear interactions. In this paper, we review…
Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) are one of very few probes of cosmology before Big Bang nucleosynthesis (BBN). We point out that in scenarios in which the Universe evolves in a non-standard manner during and after WIMP kinetic…
The discovery and confirmation that some nuclides were formed soon after the Big Bang is one of the strongest arguments in favour of the Hot Big Bang theory. The process of combining protons and neutrons in a hot, expanding universe is…
Baryon inhomogeneities can be generated very early in the universe. These inhomogeneities then decay by particle diffusion in an expanding universe. We study the decay of these baryon inhomogeneities in the early universe using the…
Neutrinos produced during the collapse of a massive star are trapped in a nuclear medium (the proto-neutron star). Typically, neutrino energies (10-100 MeV) are of the order of nuclear giant resonances energies. Hence, neutrino propagation…
Neutron matter is an intriguing nuclear system with multiple connections to other areas of physics. Considerable progress has been made over the last two decades in exploring the properties of pure neutron fluids. Here we begin by reviewing…
Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) is the synthesis of the light nuclei, Deuterium, He3, He4 and Li7, during the first few minutes of the universe. This review concentrates on recent improvements in the measurement of the primordial (after BBN,…
The formation of baryon asymmetry in the Universe is considered in the left-right asymmetry model of weak interaction. In this model, the nature of CP violation is associated with the presence of a right vector boson admixture, with a…
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…
Experiments with cold and ultracold neutrons have reached a level of precision such that problems far beyond the scale of the present Standard Model of particle physics become accessible to experimental investigation. Due to the close links…
Black holes and neutron stars present extreme forms of matter that cannot be created as such in a laboratory on Earth. Instead, we have to observe and analyze the experiments that are ongoing in the Universe. The most telling observations…
This paper derives an upper limit on the density $\rho_{\scriptstyle\Lambda}$ of dark energy based on the requirement that cosmological structure forms before being frozen out by the eventual acceleration of the universe. By allowing for…
The r-process of nucleosynthesis requires a large neutron-to-seed nucleus ratio. This does not, however, that there be an excess of neutrons over protons. If the expansion of the material is sufficiently rapid and the entropy per nucleon is…
It is widely believed that the cosmic baryon density may be obtained by inferring deuterium abundances in low-metallicity quasar absorption line systems. The implicit assumptions which enter this argument are critically assessed. In…
The discovery of nondiffuse sources of gravitational waves through compact-object mergers opens new prospects for the study of physics beyond the Standard Model. In this paper, we study the effects of a new force between quarks, suggested…
Deviations from unitarity in the three-neutrino mixing canonical picture are expected in many physics scenarios beyond the Standard Model. The mixing of new heavy neutral leptons with the three light neutrinos would in principle modify the…
During Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN), in the first 20 minutes of the evolution of the Universe, the light nuclides, D, 3He, 4He, and 7Li were synthesized in astrophysically interesting abundances. The Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation…
We investigate the impact of a nonstandard electron mass $m_e$ on early-Universe thermal history, focusing on neutrino decoupling and Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN). In the standard cosmology, neutrino--electron interactions keep neutrinos…
We consider relatively heavy neutrinos $\nu_H$, mostly contributing to a sterile state $\nu_s$, with mass in the range 10 MeV $\lesssim m_s \lesssim m_{\pi} \sim 135$ MeV, which are thermally produced in the early universe in collisional…
If the neutrino is Majorana type and the electroweak phase transition is second or weak first order, neutrino-induced interactions together with sphaleron transitions have the potential to erase a previously generated baryon asymmetry of…