Related papers: Was Entropy Conserved between BBN and Recombinatio…
Within the first 20 minutes of the evolution of the hot, dense, early Universe, astrophysically interesting abundances of deuterium, helium-3, helium-4, and lithium-7 were synthesized by the cosmic nuclear reactor. The primordial abundances…
A cosmological model with a time-varying mass of electrons seems a promising solution for the so-called Hubble tension. We examine the big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) constraints on the time-varying electron mass model, because a larger…
We investigate the sensitivity of a universe's nuclear entropy after Big Bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) to variations in both the baryon-to-photon ratio and the temporal evolution of cosmological expansion. Specifically, we construct…
We present calculations showing that upcoming Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) experiments will have the power to improve on current constraints on neutrino masses and provide new limits on neutrino degeneracy parameters. The latter could…
We investigate the possibility of accounting for the currently inferred primordial abundances of D, 3He, 4He, and 7Li by big bang nucleosynthesis in the presence of baryon density inhomogeneities plus the effects of late-decaying massive…
The Hubble expansion of galaxies, the $2.73\dK$ blackbody radiation background and the cosmic abundances of the light elements argue for a hot, dense origin of the universe --- the standard Big Bang cosmology --- and enable its evolution to…
We present constraints on the number of relativistic species from a joint analysis of cosmic microwave background (CMB) fluctuations and light element abundances (helium and deuterium) compared to big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) predictions.…
Dark matter annihilation or de-excitation, decay of metastable species, or other new physics may inject energetic electrons and photons into the photon-baryon fluid during and after recombination. As such particles cool, they partition…
We have performed a likelihood analysis of the recent data on the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR) anisotropy taken by the Boomerang experiment. We find that this data places a strong upper bound on the radiation density present…
Contrary to a common argument that a small increase in the strength of the strong force would lead to destruction of all hydrogen in the big bang due to binding of the diproton and the dineutron with a catastrophic impact on life as we know…
A massive particle decaying into neutrinos in the early Universe is known to be less constrained than if it was decaying into other standard model particles. However, even if the decay proceeds into neutrinos, the latter still inevitably…
We show that a self-consistent and coupled treatment of the weak decoupling, big bang nucleosynthesis, and photon decoupling epochs can be used to provide new insights and constraints on neutrino sector physics from high-precision…
Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) is studied within the framework of a two-parameter family of tensor-scalar theories of gravitation, with nonlinear scalar-matter coupling function a(phi). We run a BBN code modified by tensor-scalar gravity,…
We extend the model-independent likelihood analysis of big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) based on He4 and Li7 to allow for numbers of degrees of freedom which differ from the standard model value characterized by $N_\nu = 3$. We use the…
Current constraints on energy injection in the form of energetic particles before the epoch of recombination using CMB spectral distortions assume that all energy goes into $y$ and $\mu$-type distortions. We revisit these constraints with…
Big Bang Nucleosynthesis can provide, via constraints on the expansion rate at that time, limits on possible variations in Newton's Constant, $G$. The original analyses were performed before an independent measurement of the…
As the early universe expands and cools the rates of the weak interactions that keep neutrinos in thermal equilibrium with the matter and the related rates of the reactions that inter-convert neutrons and protons decrease. Eventually, these…
We extend previous studies of big bang nucleosynthesis, with the assumption that ordinary matter and dark matter sectors are entangled through the number of degrees of freedom entering the Friedmann equations. This conjecture allows us to…
We present a model for big bang nucleosynthesis which combines baryon inhomogeneities with the effects of the decays of massive particles (masses higher than a few GeV). Those particles, with half-lives longer than the standard…
The primordial abundance of deuterium produced during Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) depends sensitively on the universal ratio of baryons to photons, an important cosmological parameter probed independently by the Cosmic Microwave…