Limits on non-relativistic matter during Big-bang nucleosynthesis

Yeh, Tsung-Han; Olive, Keith A.; Fields, Brian D.

doi:10.1088/1475-7516/2024/07/016

Limits on non-relativistic matter during Big-bang nucleosynthesis

Journal Article · Mon Jul 08 00:00:00 EDT 2024 · Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2024/07/016· OSTI ID:2479325

^[1]; ^[2]; ^[3]

TRIUMF, Vancouver, BC (Canada)
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN (United States)
University of Illinois, Urbana, IL (United States); Illinois Center for Advanced Studies of the Universe, Urbana, IL (United States)

Big-bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) probes the cosmic mass-energy density at temperatures ~10 MeV to ~100 keV. Here, we consider the effect of a cosmic matter-like species that is non-relativistic and pressureless during BBN. Such a component must decay; doing so during BBN can alter the baryon-to-photon ratio, η, and the effective number of neutrino species. We use light element abundances and the cosmic microwave background (CMB) constraints on η and N_ν to place constraints on such a matter component. We find that electromagnetic decays heat the photons relative to neutrinos, and thus dilute the effective number of relativistic species to N_eff < 3 for the case of three Standard Model neutrino species. Intriguingly, likelihood results based on Planck CMB data alone find N_ν = 2.800 ± 0.294, and when combined with standard BBN and the observations of D and ⁴He give N_ν = 2.898 ± 0.141. While both results are consistent with the Standard Model, we find that a nonzero abundance of electromagnetically decaying matter gives a better fit to these results. Our best-fit results are for a matter species that decays entirely electromagnetically with a lifetime τ_X = 0.89 sec and pre-decay density that is a fraction ξ = (ρ_X/ρ_rad_{|10 MeV} = 0.0026 of the radiation energy density at 10 MeV; similarly good fits are found over a range where ξτ_X^1/2 is constant. On the other hand, decaying matter often spoils the BBN+CMB concordance, and we present limits in the (τ_X,ξ) plane for both electromagnetic and invisible decays. For dark (invisible) decays, standard BBN (i.e. ξ = 0) supplies the best fit. We end with a brief discussion of the impact of future measurements including CMB-S4.

View Accepted Manuscript (DOE)

Research Organization:: University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP)

Grant/Contract Number:: SC0011842

OSTI ID:: 2479325

Journal Information:: Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Journal Name: Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics Journal Issue: 07 Vol. 2024; ISSN 1475-7516

Publisher:: Institute of Physics (IOP)Copyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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