Did the Universe start at Zero Metallicity?

Standard Big Bang nucleosynthesis predicts an essentially zero primordial metallicity. I speculate on possible metal (i.e. nucleon number A\geq 12) production in scenarios of inhomogeneous Big Bang nucleosynthesis. It is conceivable, though not necessarily probable, that some primordial metallicity is synthesized if a small fraction of all cosmic baryons reside in very high-density regions. Such conditions could possibly result from the evaporation of some baryon-number carrying soliton prior to the epoch of Big Bang nucleosynthesis.Comment: 4 pages, to appear in proceedings of The First Stars meeting, held in Garching, Germany, August 199

Baryon Number Transport in a Cosmic QCD-Phase Transition

We investigate the transport of baryon number across phase boundaries in a putative first order QCD-phase transition. Two independent phenomenological models are employed to estimate the baryon penetrability at the phase boundary: chromoelectric flux tube models; and an analogy to baryon-baryon coalescence in nuclear physics. Our analysis indicates that baryon transport across phase boundaries may be order of magnitude more efficient than other work has suggested. We discuss the substantial uncertainties involved in estimating baryon penetrability at phase boundaries.Comment: 25 pages, 4 figures (available upon request by mail or fax), plain tex, UCRL-JC-00000

The Cloud-in-Cloud Problem in the Press-Schechter Formalism of Hierarchical Structure Formation

The formalism by Press and Schechter (PS) is often used to infer number densities of virialized objects of mass M (e.g. quasars, galaxies, clusters of galaxies, etc.) from a count of initially overdense regions in a Gaussian density perturbation field. We reanalyze the PS-formalism by explicitly counting underdense regions which are embedded within overdense regions, so called cloud-in-clouds. In contrast to the original PS-formalism, our revised analysis automatically accounts for all the cosmic material. We find that mass distribution functions for virialized objects are altered by the proper solution of the cloud-in-cloud problem. These altered distribution functions agree much better with distribution functions inferred form N-body simulations than the original PS-distribution functions.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures (available upon request by mail or fax), plain te

Absence of a Lower Limit on Omega_b in Inhomogeneous Primordial Nucleosynthesis

We show that a class of inhomogeneous big bang nucleosynthesis models exist which yield light-element abundances in agreement with observational constraints for baryon-to-photon ratios significantly smaller than those inferred from standard homogeneous big bang nucleosynthesis (HBBN). These inhomogeneous nucleosynthesis models are characterized by a bimodal distribution of baryons in which some regions have a local baryon-to-photon ratio eta=3*10e-10, while the remaining regions are baryon-depleted. HBBN scenarios with primordial (2H+3He)/H<9*10e-5 necessarily require that most baryons be in a dark or non-luminous form, although new observations of a possible high deuterium abundance in Lyman-alpha clouds may relax this requirement somewhat. The models described here present another way to relax this requirement and can even eliminate any lower bound on the baryon-to-photon ratio.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figures (available upon request by email), plain te

Delayed Reheating and the Breakdown of Coherent Oscillations

We analyze the evolution of the perturbations in the inflaton field and metric following the end of inflation. We present accurate analytic approximations for the perturbations, showing that the coherent oscillations of the post-inflationary condensate necessarily break down long before any current phenomenological constraints require the universe to become radiation dominated. Further, the breakdown occurs on length-scales equivalent to the comoving post-inflationary horizon size. This work has implications for both the inflationary "matching" problem, and the possible generation of a stochastic gravitational wave background in the post-inflationary universe.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figures, v2: references added, extended discussion in section

Enhanced Heavy-Element Formation in Baryon-Inhomogeneous Big-Bang Models

We show that primordial nucleosynthesis in baryon inhomogeneous big-bang models can lead to significant heavy-element production while still satisfying all the light-element abundance constraints including the low lithium abundance observed in population II stars. The parameters which admit this solution arise naturally from the process of neutrino induced inflation of baryon inhomogeneities prior to the epoch of nucleosynthesis. These solutions entail a small fraction of baryons (\le 2\%) in very high density regions with local baryon-to-photon ratio $\eta^h\approx 10^{-4}$, while most baryons are at a baryon-to-photon ratio which optimizes the agreement with light-element abundances. The model would imply a unique signature of baryon inhomogeneities in the early universe, evidenced by the existence of primordial material containing heavy-element products of proton and alpha- burning reactions with an abundance of $[Z]\sim -6 to -4$.Comment: 19 pages in plain Tex, 5 figures (not included) available by fax or mail upon request, ApJ in press, L