Related papers: BBN and the Primordial Abundances
We examine the possibility that Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) may produce non-trivial amounts of $^6$Li. If a primordial component of this isotope could be observed, it would provide a new fundamental test of Big-Bang cosmology, as well as…
We study the big-bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) scenario with late-decaying exotic particles with lifetime longer than $\sim 1$ sec. With a late-decaying particle in the early universe, predictions of the standard BBN scenario can be…
Light thermal relics of the hot big bang, often quantified by the parameter $N_\mathrm{eff}$, are one of the primary targets of cosmological measurements. At present, the energy density in such relics is constrained to be less than ten…
Primordial Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) tightly constrains the existence of any additional relativistic degrees of freedom at that epoch. However a large asymmetry in electron neutrino number shifts the chemical equilibrium between the…
The synthesis of nuclei in diverse cosmic scenarios is reviewed, with a summary of the basic concepts involved before a discussion of the current status in each case is made. We review the physics of the early universe, the proton to…
We describe how cosmology has converged towards a beautiful model of the Universe: the Big Bang Universe. We praise this model, but show there is a dark side to it. This dark side is usually called ``the cosmological problems'': a set of…
The measurement of the cosmic microwave background has strongly constrained the cosmological parameters of the Universe. When the measured density of baryons (ordinary matter) is combined with standard Big Bang nucleosynthesis calculations,…
The relic cosmological abundance of stable or long-lived neutral colored particles gets reduced by about a few orders of magnitude by annihilations that occur after QCD confinement. We compute the abundance and the cosmological bounds on…
The fragile light elements lithium, beryllium, and boron are easily destroyed in stellar interiors, and are thus superb probes of physical processes occuring in the outer stellar layers. The light elements are also excellent tracers of the…
The observational evidence for the recent acceleration of the universe shows that canonical theories of cosmology and particle physics are incomplete and that new physics is out there, waiting to be discovered. A compelling task for…
The accelerating expansion of the universe presents an exciting, fundamental challenge to the standard models of particle physics and cosmology. I highlight some of the outstanding challenges in both developing theoretical models and…
Many scenarios of physics beyond the standard model predict new light, weakly coupled degrees of freedom, populated in the early universe and remaining as cosmic relics today. Due to their high abundances, these relics can significantly…
We discuss the present bounds on the relativistic energy density in the Universe parameterized in terms of the effective number of neutrinos N using the most recent cosmological data on Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature…
Big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) and the cosmic baryon density from cosmic microwave background anisotropies together predict a primordial Li7 abundance a factor of 2--3 higher than that observed in galactic halo dwarf stars. A recent…
The determination of the primeval deuterium abundance has opened a precision era in big-bang nucleosynthesis (BBN), making accurate predictions more important than ever before. We present in analytic form new, more precise predictions for…
Recent observation of the power spectrum of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) Radiation has exhibited that the flat cosmology is most likely. This suggests too large universal baryon-density parameter $\Omega_b h^2 \approx 0.022 \sim 0.030$…
The abundances of the {\it rare} light elements, Li, Be, and B, provide clues about stellar structure and evolution, about Galactic evolution and about their nucleosynthesis, including production during the Big Bang. The abundances of the…
Many well-motivated extensions of the Standard Model predict the existence of new light species that may have been produced in the early universe. Prominent examples include axions, sterile neutrinos, gravitinos, dark photons, and more. The…
We present detailed numerical calculations of the light element abundances synthesized in a Universe consisting of matter- and antimatter- domains, as predicted to arise in some electroweak baryogenesis scenarios. In our simulations all…
Cosmology provides interesting information on neutrino mixing models with sterile neutrinos. In this case non standard BBN effects can be relevant. We show how the recent measurement of the baryon content from the observations of CMB…