Primordial nucleosynthesis as a probe of fundamental physics parameters

Abstract

We analyze the effect of variation of fundamental couplings and mass scales on primordial nucleosynthesis in a systematic way. The first step establishes the response of primordial element abundances to the variation of a large number of nuclear physics parameters, including nuclear binding energies. We find a strong influence of the n − p mass difference (for the 4 He abundance), of the nucleon mass (for deuterium) and of A = 3, 4, 7 binding energies (for 3 He, 6 Li and 7 Li). A second step relates the nuclear parameters to the parameters of the Standard Model of particle physics. The deuterium, and, above all, 7 Li abundances depend strongly on the average light quark massm ≡ (m u + m d )/2. We calculate the behaviour of abundances when variations of fundamental parameters obey relations arising from grand unification. We also discuss the possibility of a substantial shift in the lithium abundance while the deuterium and 4 He abundances are only weakly affected.

Is there further evidence for spatial variation of fundamental constants?

“…The production of each of these elements has a different sensitivity to fundamental constants, therefore a complete set of data can, in principle, simultaneously measure several fundamental constants at the time of nucleosynthesis. The dependence of primordial abundances on fundamental constants such as α and m q /Λ QCD (the ratio of light-quark mass to the pole in the running strong coupling constant) is the subject of current research [28][29][30][31]. An observed spatial variation in primordial abundance (non-zero d a ) can be related to the variation of a fundamental constant X at that position in space at the time of big bang nucleosynthesis using the relationships…”

Effects of the variation of fundamental constants on Population III stellar evolution

“…Martins et al 2004;Stefanescu 2007;Nakashima et al 2008;Scóccola et al 2008) and from big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) (z ∼ 10 10 ) (e.g. Kolb et al 1986;Campbell & Olive 1995;Bergström et al 1999;Nollett & Lopez 2002;Ichikawa & Kawasaki 2002;Flambaum & Shuryak 2002;Müller et al 2004;Ichikawa & Kawasaki 2004;Landau et al 2006;Coc et al 2007;Dent et al 2007). We refer to Uzan (2003Uzan ( , 2004Uzan ( , 2009b for recent reviews on this topic.…”

Effect of the variation of the Higgs vacuum expectation value upon the deuterium binding energy and primordial abundances of D and4He

“…There exist several nucleon-nucleon effective potentials (Reid 1968;Nagels et al 1975Nagels et al , 1977Lacombe et al 1980;Machleidt et al 1987;Stoks et al 1994;Wiringa et al 1995); for the sake of the present calculation we have chosen the Reid 93 potential (Stoks et al 1994 of v/Λ QCD , through the variation of the pion mass. In this aspect, our attempt differs from the one of Dent et al (2007), where the variation of the binding energies of the nuclei involved in BBN is taken in a parameter form.…”

“…In the same work, D was represented as a linear function of v and this dependence was used to set constraints on the variation of the Higgs vacuum expectation value during cosmological times. Dent et al (2007) studied the dependence of the primordial abundances with several parameters such as G N , neutron decay time, α, m e , the average nucleon mass, the neutronproton mass difference and D, T, 3 He, 4 He, 6 Li, 7 Li, and 7 Be binding energies, and found that the deuterium and lithium abundances are strongly dependent on the Higgs vacuum expectation value. However, in Dent et al (2007), the variations of the binding energies are assumed to obey a linear dependence on the pion mass, as given by Beane & Savage (2003).…”