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Title: Dark sector equilibration during nucleosynthesis

Journal Article · · Physical Review D
ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [2]; ORCiD logo [1]
  1. SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
  2. SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States); Fermi National Accelerator Lab. (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States)
+ Show Author Affiliations

Light, weakly coupled dark sectors may be naturally decoupled in the early Universe and enter equilibrium with the Standard Model bath during the epoch of primordial nucleosynthesis. The equilibration and eventual decoupling of dark sector states modifies the expansion rate of the Universe, which alters the predicted abundances of the light elements. This result can be encompassed in a time-varying contribution to Neff, the effective number of neutrino species, such that Neff during nucleosynthesis differs from its measured value at the time of recombination. We investigate the impact of such variations on the light element abundances with model-independent templates for the time dependence of Neff as well as in specific models where a dark sector equilibrates with neutrinos or photons. We reveal that significant modifications of the expansion rate are consistent with the measured abundances of light nuclei, provided that they occur during specific periods of nucleosynthesis. In constraining concrete models, the relative importance of the cosmic microwave background and primordial nucleosynthesis is highly model dependent.

Research Organization:
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC), Menlo Park, CA (United States); Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-07CH11359; AC02-76SF00515
OSTI ID:
1545437
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1545104
Report Number(s):
arXiv:1904.04256; FERMILAB-PUB-19-138-A-T; SLAC-PUB-17421; PRVDAQ; 1728965
Journal Information:
Physical Review D, Vol. 100, Issue 1; ISSN 2470-0010
Publisher:
American Physical Society (APS)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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Precision big bang nucleosynthesis with improved Helium-4 predictions text January 2018
A Thermal Neutrino Portal to Sub-MeV Dark Matter text January 2018
Neutrino decoupling beyond the Standard Model: CMB constraints on the Dark Matter mass with a fast and precise $N_{\rm eff}$ evaluation text January 2018
BBN constraints on the annihilation of MeV-scale dark matter text January 2019
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Cited By (2)

Refined bounds on MeV-scale thermal dark sectors from BBN and the CMB journal January 2020
Refined Bounds on MeV-scale Thermal Dark Sectors from BBN and the CMB text January 2019

Figures / Tables (15)

FIG. 1(p. 2)figure FIG. 1
TABLE I(p. 2)table TABLE I
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TABLE II(p. 9)table TABLE II
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FIG. 13(p. 17)figure FIG. 13

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