Primordial He4 Abundance Constrains the Possible Time Variation of the Higgs Vacuum Expectation Value

Abstract

We constrain the possible time variation of the Higgs vacuum expectation value ($v$) by recent results on the primordial ${}^{4}He$ abundance ($Y_P$). For that, we use an analytic approach which enables us to take important issues into consideration, that have been ignored by previous works, like the $v$-dependence of the relevant cross sections of deuterium production and photodisintegration, including the full Klein- Nishina cross section. Furthermore, we take a non-equilibrium Ansatz for the freeze-out concentration of neutrons and protons and incorporate the latest results on the neutron decay. Finally, we approximate the key-parameters of the primordial ${}^{4}He$ production (the mean lifetime of the free neutron and the binding energy of the deuteron) by terms of $\frac{v}{v_0}$ (where $v_0$ denotes the present theoretical estimate). Eventually, we derive the relation $Y_P\simeq 0.2479-5.54(\frac{v-v_0}{v_0}{)}^2-0.808(\frac{v-v_0}{v_0})$ and the most stringent limit on a possible time variation of $v$ is given by: $-5.4\cdot 10^{-4}\le \frac{v-v_0}{v_0}\le 4.4\cdot 10^{-4}$.

arXiv commentAccepted for publication in IJTP

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Cited by in corpus (1)

• From primordial ${}^4$He abundance to the Higgs field