Related papers: Big Bang Nucleosynthesis in Crisis?
Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN), as one of the earliest processes in the universe accessible to direct observation, offers a powerful and independent probe of the cosmic expansion history. With recent advances in both theory and observation,…
The theoretical predictions of the primordial abundances of elements in the big-bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) are dominated by uncertainties in the input nuclear reaction rates. We investigate the effect of modifying these reaction rates on…
A new accurate evaluation of primordial light nuclei abundances is presented. The proton to neutron conversion rates have been corrected to take into account radiative effects, finite nucleon mass, thermal and plasma corrections. 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 address the emerging discrepancy between the Big Bang Nucleosynthesis data and standard cosmology, which asks for a bit longer evolution time. If this effect is real, one possible implication (in a framework of brane cosmology model) is…
We discuss the effects of a possible time variation of the Newton constant $G_{\rm N}$ on light elements production in Big Bang Nucleosyntesis (BBN). We provide analytical estimates for the dependence of primordial abundances on the value…
Deuterium is the best indicator of the baryon density; however, only its present abundance is known (and only locally) and its chemical evolution is intertwined with that of $^3$He. Because galactic abundances are spatially heterogeneous,…
Big Bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) theory predicts the abundances of the light elements D, $^3$He, $^4$He and $^7$Li produced in the early universe. The primordial abundances of D and $^4$He inferred from observational data are in good…
The success of primordial nucleosynthesis as a cornerstone of the hot Big Bang model has been limited by the long-standing lithium problem. Recent work presented a self-consistent perturbative analysis of the effects of variations in…
The paper "Big Bang Nucleosynthesis and Active-Sterile Neutrino Mixing: Evidence for Maximal $\nu_\mu \leftrightarrow \nu_\tau$ Mixing in Super Kamiokande?" by X. Shi and G. M. Fuller (astro-ph/9810075) discusses the cosmological…
We discuss in detail the effect of neutrino oscillations in Big Bang nucleosynthesis, between active and sterile neutrinos, as well as between active and active neutrinos. We calculate the constraints on mixings between active and sterile…
We determine the restrictions imposed by primordial nucleosynthesis upon a heavy tau neutrino, in the presence of nu-tau annihilations into Majorons, as expected in a wide class of particle physics models of neutrino mass. We determine the…
Combined with other CMB experiments, the WMAP survey provides an accurate estimate of the baryon density of the Universe. In the framework of the standard Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN), such a baryon density leads to predictions for the…
Following a brief introduction to early Universe cosmology, the current of status of big bang nucleosynthesis is reviewed and the concordance between theory and observation is examined in detail. The abundances of He4 and Li7 determine the…
Primordial or big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) is now a parameter free theory whose predictions are in good overall agreement with observations. However, the 7Li calculated abundance is significantly higher than the one deduced from…
In the primordial Universe, neutrino decoupling occurs only slightly before electron-positron annihilations, leading to an increased neutrino energy density with order $10^{-2}$ spectral distortions compared to the standard instantaneous…
The light elements D, \he3, \he4, and \li7 are produced in big bang nucleosynthesis and undergo changes in their abundances due to galactic processing. Since one may observe most of these elements only in contemporary environments,…
We study the impact of light GeV-scale heavy neutral leptons (HNLs) on Big Bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) in the neutrino-extended Standard Model Effective Field Theory ($\nu$SMEFT). We show that, based on very general considerations, BBN…
We evaluate abundance anomalies generated in patches of the universe where the baryon-to-photon ratio was locally enhanced by possibly many orders of magnitude in the range $\eta = 10^{-10} - 10^{-1}$. Our study is motivated by the possible…
We consider nucleosynthesis constraints on models which use chiral symmetry breaking as a basis for understanding very small Dirac neutrino masses. We show that present big-bang nucleosynthesis constraints impose a well-defined upper bound…