One of the three testaments in favor of the big bang theory is the prediction of the primordial elemental abundances in the big-bang nucleosynthesis (BBN). The Standard BBN is a parameter-free theory due to the precise knowledge of the baryon-to-photon ratio of the Universe obtained from studies of the anisotropies of cosmic microwave background radiation. Although the computed abundances of light elements during primordial nucleosynthesis and those determined from observations are in good agreement throughout a range of nine orders of magnitude, there is still a disparity of $^7$Li abundance overestimated by a factor of $\sim 2.5$ when calculated theoretically. The number of light neutrino flavors, the neutron lifetime and the baryon-to-photon ratio in addition to the astrophysical nuclear reaction rates determine the primordial abundances. We previously looked into the impact of updating baryon-to-photon ratio and neutron lifetime and changing quite a few reaction rates on the yields of light element abundances in BBN. In this work, calculations are performed using new reaction rates for $^3$H(p,$γ$)$^4$He, $^6$Li(p,$γ$)$^7$Be, $^7$Be(p,$γ$)$^8$B, $^{13}$N(p,$γ$)$^{14}$O, $^7$Li(n,$γ$)$^8$Li and $^{11}$B(n,$γ$)$^{12}$B along with the latest measured value of neutron lifetime. We observe from theoretical calculations that these changes result in improvement by causing further reduction in the abundance of $^7$Li than calculated earlier.
Using the primordial helium abundance, an upper limit to the magnetic moments for Dirac neutrinos had been provided by imposing restrictions on the number of the additional helicity states. Considering non-thermal photons produced in the decay of the heavy sterile mass eigenstates due to the neutrino magnetic moment, we explore the constraints imposed by the observed abundances of all the light elements produced during the Big Bang nucleosynthesis.
Big Bang Nucleosynthesis imposes stringent bounds on light sterile neutrinos mixing with the active flavors. Here we discuss how altered dispersion relations can weaken such bounds and allow compatibility of new sterile neutrino degrees of freedom with a successful generation of the light elements in the early Universe.
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 find a relation between the temperatures of the weakly interacting matter and dark-matter sectors. The constraints imposed by observations are studied by comparison with calculations of big bang nucleosynthesis for the abundance of light elements. It is found that these constraints are compatible with cold dark matter and a wide range number of dark sectors.
We explore effects of the screening due to the relativistic electron-positron plasma and presence of resonances in the secondary reactions leading to A=7 nuclei during the Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. In particular, we investigate and examine possible low-lying resonances in the $^7$Be($^3$He, $γ$)$^{10}$C reaction and examine the resultant destruction of $^7$Be for various resonance locations and strengths. While a resonance in the $^{10}$C compound nucleus is thought to have negligible effects we explore the possibility of an enhancement from plasma screening that may adjust the final $^7$Be ab…
Rijal, et al. in their recent publication [Phys. Rev. Lett {\bf 122}, 182701 (2019), arXiv:1808.07893], on "Measurement of d + $^7$Be Cross Sections for Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN)", misrepresent their result, they misrepresent previous work of Parker (72) and of Caughlan and Fowler (88), and quite possibly, contradicts the very BBN theory that has been established over the last few decades. This comment is intended to correct these misrepresentations and critically review their claims on BBN.
We calculate the effect of variation in the light-current quark mass, $m_q$, on standard big bang nucleosynthesis. A change in $m_q$ at during the era of nucleosynthesis affects nuclear reaction rates, and hence primordial abundances, via changes the binding energies of light nuclei. It is found that a relative variation of $δm_q/m_q = 0.016 \pm 0.005$ provides better agreement between observed primordial abundances and those predicted by theory. This is largely due to resolution of the existing discrepancies for 7Li. However this method ignores possible changes in the position of resonances i…
We study the effects of electron screening on nuclear reaction rates occurring during the Big Bang nucleosynthesis epoch. The sensitivity of the predicted elemental abundances on electron screening is studied in details. It is shown that electron screening does not produce noticeable results in the abundances unless the traditional Debye-Hückel model for the treatment of electron screening in stellar environments is enhanced by several orders of magnitude. The present work rules out electron screening as a relevant ingredient to Big Bang nucleosynthesis and ruling out exotic possibilities for …
Following a recent suggestion of axion cooling of photons between the nucleosynthesis and recombination epochs in the Early Universe, we investigate a hybrid model with both axions and relic supersymmetric particles. In this model we demonstrate that the 7Li abundance can be consistent with observations without destroying the important concordance of deuterium abundance.
A moving ion in plasma creates a deformed electric potential depending on the ion velocity, which leads to the distinct screening effect compared to the standard static Salpeter formula. In this paper, adopting the test charge method, we explore the dynamical screening effects on big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN). We find that the high temperature in the early universe causes the ion velocity to be faster than the solar condition so that the electric potential is effectively polarized. However, the low density of background plasma components significantly suppresses the dynamical screening effect…
The abundances of light elements based on the big bang nucleosynthesis model are calculated using the Tsallis non-extensive statistics. The impact of the variation of the non-extensive parameter $q$ from the unity value is compared to observations and to the abundance yields from the standard big bang model. We find large differences between the reaction rates and the abundance of light elements calculated with the extensive and the non-extensive statistics. We found that the observations are consistent with a non-extensive parameter q = 1 + 0.05 - 0.12, indicating that a large deviation from …
Nuclear reaction rates are among the most important input for understanding the primordial nucleosynthesis and therefore for a quantitative description of the early Universe. An up-to-date compilation of direct cross sections of 2H(d,p)3H, 2H(d,n)3He, 7Li(p,alpha)4He and 3He(d,p)4He reactions is given. These are among the most uncertain cross sections used and input for Big Bang nucleosynthesis calculations. Their measurements through the Trojan Horse Method (THM) are also reviewed and compared with direct data. The reaction rates and the corresponding recommended errors in this work were used…
We provide the most stringent constraint to date on possible deviations from the usually-assumed Maxwell-Boltzmann (MB) velocity distribution for nuclei in the Big-Bang plasma. The impact of non-extensive Tsallis statistics on thermonuclear reaction rates involved in standard models of Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) has been investigated. We find that the non-extensive parameter $q$ may deviate by, at most, $|δq|$=6$\times$10$^{-4}$ from unity for BBN predictions to be consistent with observed primordial abundances; $q$=1 represents the classical Boltzmann-Gibbs statistics. This constraint ari…
We propose helium-4 spallation processes induced by long-lived stau in supersymmetric standard models, and investigate an impact of the processes on light elements abundances. We show that, as long as the phase space of helium-4 spallation processes is open, they are more important than stau-catalyzed fusion and hence constrain the stau property.
We compute radiative corrections to nuclear reaction rates that determine the outcome of the Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN). Any nuclear reaction producing a photon with an energy above $2m_e$ must be supplemented by the corresponding reaction where the final state photon is replaced by an electron-positron pair. We find that pair production brings a typical $0.2 \%$ enhancement to photon emission rates, resulting in a similar size corrections to elemental abundances. The exception is $^4{\rm He}$ abundance, which is insensitive to the small changes in the nuclear reaction rates. We also inves…
We study the impact on the primordial abundances of light elements created by a variation of the quark masses at the time of Big Bang nucleosynthesis (BBN). In order to navigate through the particle and nuclear physics required to connect quark masses to binding energies and reaction rates in a model-independent way, we use lattice QCD data and a hierarchy of effective field theories. We find that the measured Helium-4 abundances put a bound of -1 % <~ d m_q/m_q <~ 0.7 % on a possible variation of quark masses. The effect of quark mass variations on the deuterium abundances can be largely comp…
We examine the physics of the early universe when Majorana neutrinos (electron neutrino, muon neutrino, tau neutrino) possess transition magnetic moments. These extra couplings beyond the usual weak interaction couplings alter the way neutrinos decouple from the plasma of electrons/positrons and photons. We calculate how transition magnetic moment couplings modify neutrino decoupling temperatures, and then use a full weak, strong, and electromagnetic reaction network to compute corresponding changes in Big Bang Nucleosynthesis abundance yields. We find that light element abundances and other c…
We discuss nuclear reactions which could play a role in Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN). Most of these reactions involve lithium and beryllium isotopes and the rates for some of these have not previously been included in BBN calculations. Few of these reactions are well studied in the laboratory. We also discuss novel effects in these reactions, including thermal population of nuclear target states, resonant enhancement, and non-thermal neutron reaction products. We perform sensitivity studies which show that even given considerable nuclear physics uncertainties, most of these nuclear reactions…
The cross section for n+p -> d+gamma is calculated at energies relevant to big bang nucleosynthesis using the recently developed effective field theory that describes the two-nucleon sector. The E1 amplitude is computed up to NNNLO and depends only upon nucleon-nucleon phase shift data. In contrast, the M1 contribution is computed up to NLO, and the four-nucleon-one-magnetic-photon counterterm that enters is determined by the cross section for cold neutron capture. The uncertainty in the calculation for nucleon energies up to E ~ 1 MeV is estimated to be < 4%.
We consider the effect of a small-scale matter-antimatter domain structure on big bang nucleosynthesis and place upper limits on the amount of antimatter in the early universe. For small domains, which annihilate before nucleosynthesis, this limit comes from underproduction of He-4. For larger domains, the limit comes from He-3 overproduction. Most of the He-3 from antiproton-helium annihilation is annihilated also. The main source of He-3 is photodisintegration of He-4 by the electromagnetic cascades initiated by the annihilation.
Production of regions of antimatter in the early universe is predicted in many baryogenesis models. Small scale antimatter regions would annihilate during or soon after nucleosynthesis, affecting the abundances of the light elements. In this paper we study how the acceptable range in Omega_b changes in the presence of antimatter regions, as compared to the standard big bang nucleosynthesis. It turns out that it is possible to produce at the same time both a low 4He value (Y_p < 0.240) and a low D/H value (D/H < 4e-5), but overproduction of 7Li is unavoidable at large Omega_b.
An effective field theory calculation of the n+p->d+gamma cross section accurate to 1% for center of mass energy E up to ~1 MeV is presented. At these energies, which are relevant for big-bang nucleosynthesis, isovector magnetic transitions M1 and isovector electric transitions E1 give the dominant contributions. The M1 amplitude is calculated up to next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) and the contribution from the associated four-nucleon-one-photon operator is determined from the cold neutron capture rate. The E1 amplitude is calculated up to NNNNLO. The four-nucleon-one-photon operator contr…
Recent data on cosmological variation of the electromagnetic fine structure constant from distant quasar (QSO) absorption spectra have inspired a more general discussion of possible variation of other constants. We discuss variation of strong scale and quark masses. We derive the limits on their relative change from (i) primordial Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN); (ii) Oklo natural nuclear reactor, (iii) quasar absorption spectra, and (iv) laboratory measurements of hyperfine intervals.
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 that there is a ``dark radiation'' component which is negative and makes few percents of ordinary matter density. If so, all scales of this model can be fixed, provided brane-to-bulk leakage problem is solved.
We have studied big bang nucleosynthesis in the presence of regions of antimatter. Depending on the distance scale of the antimatter region, and thus the epoch of their annihilation, the amount of antimatter in the early universe is constrained by the observed abundances. Small regions, which annihilate after weak freezeout but before nucleosynthesis, lead to a reduction in the 4He yield, because of neutron annihilation. Large regions, which annihilate after nucleosynthesis, lead to an increased 3He yield. Deuterium production is also affected but not as much. The three most important producti…
Big Bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) is the earliest sensitive probe of the values of many fundamental particle physics parameters. We have found the leading linear dependences of primordial abundances on all relevant parameters of the standard BBN code, including binding energies and nuclear reaction rates. This enables us to set limits on possible variations of fundamental parameters. We find that 7Li is expected to be significantly more sensitive than other species to many fundamental parameters, a result which also holds for variations of coupling strengths in grand unified (GUT) models. Our wor…
In this paper, we revisit in detail the effects of primordial magnetic fields on big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) including a discussion of the magnetic field geometry and the anomalous magnetic moment. The presence of magnetic fields affects BBN by (1) increasing the weak reaction rates; (2) increasing the electron density due to changes to the electron phase space; and (3) by increasing the expansion rate of the universe, due both to the magnetic field energy density and to the modified electron energy density. Of the effects considered, the increase in the expansion rate due to the magnetic f…
