The path to metallicity: synthesis of CNO elements in standard BBN

Abstract

We perform a reanalysis of the production of CNO elements in a standard Big Bang Nucleosynthesis scenario. The CNO yields in BBN are suppressed by the low density of the plasma, Coulomb barrier effects and the short time scales involved. Yet, the inclusion of nuclides and reactions traditionally disregarded may lead to an increase relevant enough to affect the pristine Population III stars. After a critical reanalysis and upgrade of the nuclear network our results show no major discrepancies with the ones obtained using a smaller nuclear network. The robustness of the standard predictions-the early generation of star developed in a metal-free environment-is confirmed.

4 pages, 1 eps figure

References in corpus (4)

• Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Three Year Results: Implications for Cosmology
• A probable stellar solution to the cosmological lithium discrepancy
• Deep Mixing of He-3: Reconciling Big Bang and Stellar Nucleosynthesis
• Effects of non-standard neutrino-electron interactions on relic neutrino decoupling

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Primordial Nucleosynthesis: from precision cosmology to fundamental physics
• The Primordial Lithium Problem
• Effects of rotation on the evolution of primordial stars
• A robust upper limit on N_eff from BBN, circa 2011
• Standard big bang nucleosynthesis and primordial CNO Abundances after Planck
• A new tension in the cosmological model from primordial deuterium?
• Statistical Methods for Thermonuclear Reaction Rates and Nucleosynthesis Simulations
• Constraining the primordial black hole abundance through Big-Bang nucleosynthesis
• Metals at the surface of last scatter