BBN For Pedestrians

The simplest, `standard' model of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (SBBN) assumes three light neutrinos (N_nu = 3) and no significant electron neutrino asymmetry, leaving only one adjustable parameter: the baryon to photon ratio eta. The primordial abundance of any one nuclide can, therefore, be used to measure the baryon abundance and the value derived from the observationally inferred primordial abundance of deuterium closely matches that from current, non-BBN data, primarily from the WMAP survey. However, using this same estimate there is a tension between the SBBN-predicted 4He and 7Li abundances and their current, observationally inferred primordial abundances, suggesting that N_nu may differ from the standard model value of three and/or that there may be a non-zero neutral lepton asymmetry (or, that systematic errors in the abundance determinations have been underestimated or overlooked). The differences are not large and the allowed ranges of the BBN parameters permitted by the data are quite small. Within these ranges, the BBN-predicted abundances of D, 3He, 4He, and 7Li are very smooth, monotonic functions of eta, N_nu, and the lepton asymmetry. It is possible to describe the dependencies of these abundances (or powers of them) upon the three parameters by simple, linear fits which, over their ranges of applicability, are accurate to a few percent or better. The fits presented here have not been maximized for their accuracy but, for their simplicity. To identify the ranges of applicability and relative accuracies, they are compared to detailed BBN calculations; their utility is illustrated with several examples. Given the tension within BBN, these fits should prove useful in facilitating studies of the viability of proposals for non-standard physics and cosmology, prior to undertaking detailed BBN calculations.Comment: Submitted to a Focus Issue on Neutrino Physics in New Journal of Physics (www.njp.org

Quintessential Kination and Cold Dark Matter Abundance

The generation of a kination-dominated phase by a quintessential exponential model is investigated and the parameters of the model are restricted so that a number of observational constraints (originating from nucleosynthesis, the present acceleration of the universe and the dark-energy-density parameter) are satisfied. The decoupling of a thermal cold dark matter particle during the period of kination is analyzed, the relic density is calculated both numerically and semi-analytically and the results are compared with each other. It is argued that the enhancement, with respect to the standard paradigm, of the cold dark matter abundance can be expressed as a function of the quintessential density parameter at the onset of nucleosynthesis. We find that values of the latter quantity close to its upper bound require the thermal-averaged cross section times the velocity of the cold relic to be almost three orders of magnitude larger than this needed in the standard scenario so as compatibility with the cold dark matter constraint is achieved.Comment: Published versio

Gravitational clustering of relic neutrinos and implications for their detection

We study the gravitational clustering of big bang relic neutrinos onto existing cold dark matter (CDM) and baryonic structures within the flat $\Lambda$CDM model, using both numerical simulations and a semi-analytical linear technique, with the aim of understanding the neutrinos' clustering properties for direct detection purposes. In a comparative analysis, we find that the linear technique systematically underestimates the amount of clustering for a wide range of CDM halo and neutrino masses. This invalidates earlier claims of the technique's applicability. We then compute the exact phase space distribution of relic neutrinos in our neighbourhood at Earth, and estimate the large scale neutrino density contrasts within the local Greisen--Zatsepin--Kuzmin zone. With these findings, we discuss the implications of gravitational neutrino clustering for scattering-based detection methods, ranging from flux detection via Cavendish-type torsion balances, to target detection using accelerator beams and cosmic rays. For emission spectroscopy via resonant annihilation of extremely energetic cosmic neutrinos on the relic neutrino background, we give new estimates for the expected enhancement in the event rates in the direction of the Virgo cluster.Comment: 38 pages, 8 embedded figures, iopart.cls; v2: references added, minor changes in text, to appear in JCA

Nuclear Reaction Network for Primordial Nucleosynthesis: a detailed analysis of rates, uncertainties and light nuclei yields

We analyze in details the standard Primordial Nucleosynthesis scenario. In particular we discuss the key theoretical issues which are involved in a detailed prediction of light nuclide abundances, as the weak reaction rates, neutrino decoupling and nuclear rate modeling. We also perform a new analysis of available data on the main nuclear processes entering the nucleosynthesis reaction network, with particular stress on their uncertainties as well as on their role in determining the corresponding uncertainties on light nuclide theoretical estimates. The current status of theoretical versus experimental results for 2H, 3He, 4He and 7Li is then discussed using the determination of the baryon density as obtained from Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropies.Comment: LaTeX, 83 pages, 30 .pdf figures. Some typos in the units of R-functions in appendix D and relative plots fixe

Extended quintessence with an exponential coupling

We study a class of extended quintessence cosmologies where the scalar field playing the role of the dark energy is exponentially coupled to the Ricci scalar. We find that the dynamics induced by the effective gravitational potential in the Klein\u2013Gordon equation dominates the motion of the field in the early universe. The resulting 'R-boost' trajectory is characterized by a kinetic dark energy density, given by [3\u3c1mnr0(1+z)]2[32\u3c1r0\u3c9JBD0] 121, where \u3c9JBD0, \u3c1r0 and \u3c1mnr0 are calculated at present, and represent the Jordan\u2013Brans\u2013Dicke parameter, the density of relativistic matter and of those species which are non-relativistic at redshift z, respectively. We show that such a trajectory represents an attractor, equivalent to a tracking solution with equation of state w = 121/3, providing a large basin of attraction for the initial dark energy density regardless of the properties of the potential energy yielding acceleration today. We derive the up to date constraints from big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) on the present scenario, and we show that they are largely satisfied for interesting trajectories of the dark energy scalar field in the early universe. We compute the cosmological perturbation spectra in these cosmologies. For a fixed value of \u3c9JBD\u20090, the projection and integrated Sachs\u2013Wolfe effects on the cosmic microwave background anisotropy are considerably larger in the exponential case with respect to a quadratic non-minimal coupling, reflecting the fact that the effective gravitational constant depends exponentially on the dynamics of the field