Do Fermions and Bosons Produce the Same Gravitational Field?

Abstract

We examine some cosmological consequences of gravity coupling with different strength to fermions and bosons. We show that this leads to a different perturbation of the standard picture of primordial nucleosynthesis than the addition of extra neutrino types or overall scaling of the value of G. Observed abundances of deuterium and helium-4 place bounds on the ratio of the bosonic gravitational constant (G_B) to the fermionic gravitational constant (G_F) of 0.45 < G_B/G_F < 0.92 at 1-sigma, and 0.33 < G_B/G_F < 1.10 at 2-sigma. A value of G_B < G_F can reconcile the current "tension" between the abundances of deuterium and helium-4 predicted by primordial nucleosynthesis. We comment briefly on other cosmological effects.

4 pages, 1 new figure and clarifications added

References in corpus (1)

• Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (in "The Review of Particle Properties" 2004)

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Primordial Nucleosynthesis: from precision cosmology to fundamental physics
• Test of Einstein Equivalence Principle for 0-spin and half-integer-spin atoms: Search for spin-gravity coupling effects
• Primordial Nucleosynthesis: Successes And Challenges
• Testing gravity with cold atom interferometry: Results and prospects
• Precision Gravity Tests and the Einstein Equivalence Principle
• Detecting a Lorentz-Violating Field in Cosmology
• Constraints on the Variation of G from Primordial Nucleosynthesis
• From Cavendish to PLANCK: Constraining Newton's Gravitational Constant with CMB Temperature and Polarization Anisotropy
• Dirac Fields in Loop Quantum Gravity and Big Bang Nucleosynthesis
• Viscous gravitational aether and the cosmological constant problem
• Constraining the spin-gravity coupling effects to the $10^{-10}$-level with dual-species atom interferometers