Testing Primordial Abundances With Sterile Neutrinos

TL;DR

This paper investigates how sterile neutrinos influence primordial element abundances during Big Bang Nucleosynthesis, finding consistency with observational data when 7Li is excluded, thus providing insights into early universe physics.

Contribution

It introduces a calculation of primordial element abundances incorporating sterile neutrinos and finite chemical potentials, aligning theoretical predictions with observational constraints.

Findings

Theoretical abundances match WMAP baryonic density data.

Consistency with LSND mixing angle limits is achieved.

Excluding 7Li resolves discrepancies between theory and observations.

Abstract

The mixing between sterile and active neutrinos is taken into account in the calculation of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. The abundances of primordial elements, like D, 3He, 4He and 7Li, are calculated by including sterile neutrinos, and by using finite chemical potentials. It is found that the resulting theoretical abundances are consistent with WMAP data on baryonic densities, and with limits of LSND on mixing angles, only if 7Li is excluded from the statistical analysis of theoretical and experimental results.