The Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis Limit to the Number of Neutrino Species

Abstract

Concern about systematic uncertainty in the ${}^4$He abundance as well as the chemical evolution of ${}^3$He leads us to re-examine this important limit. It is shown that with conservative assumptions no more than the equivalent of 4 massless neutrino species are allowed. Even with the most extreme estimates of the astrophysical uncertainties a meaningful limit still exists, less than 5 massless neutrino species, and illustrates the robustness of this argument. A definitive measurement of the deuterium abundance in high-redshift hydrogen clouds should soon sharpen the limit.

10 pages, 2 figures (LaTeX 2.09 using epsf.sty and rotate.sty)

References in corpus (16)

• Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis and the Baryon Density of the Universe
• A consistent explanation for ${}^{12}$C/${}^{13}$C, ${}^7$Li, and ${}^3$He anomalies in red giant stars
• The Cosmological Baryon Density from the Deuterium Abundance at a redshift z = 3.57
• On the Abundance of Primordial Helium
• Refined Big Bang Nucleosynthesis Constraints on ${\Omega }_{Baryon}$ and $N_{\nu }$
• Assessing Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis
• Model Independent Predictions of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis from \he4 and \li7: Consistency and Implications
• ${}^3$He Transport in the Sun and the Solar Neutrino Problem
• ${}^7$Li Abundances in Halo Stars: Testing Stellar Evolution Models and the Primordial ${}^7$Li Abundance
• A Wavelet Space-Scale-Decomposition Analysis of Structure and Evolution fo QSO's Ly$\alpha$ Absorption Lines
• No Crisis for Big Bang Nucleosynthesis
• Model-Independent Predictions of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis
• A New Look At Neutrino Limits From Big Bang Nucleosynthesis
• Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis in Light of Discordant Deuterium Measurements
• Deuteronomy and Numbers
• Cosmological Implications of the First Measurement of the Local ISM Abundance of ${}^3$He

Cited by in corpus (30)

• Gravitational Wave Experiments and Early Universe Cosmology
• Big Bang Nucleosynthesis: 2015
• The Phenomenology of Extra Neutral Gauge Bosons
• Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis After Planck
• Big-bang Nucleosynthesis Enters the Precision Era
• Scalar-Tensor Gravity and Quintessence
• Neutrino Decay as an Explanation of Atmospheric Neutrino Observations
• The Cosmic Microwave Background and Particle Physics
• Precision Prediction for the Big-Bang Abundance of Primordial Helium
• Viability of f(R) Theories with Additional Powers of Curvature
• Relic Gravitational Waves from Cosmic Strings: Updated Constraints and Opportunities for Detection
• Big bang nucleosynthesis limit on N_nu
• Primordial Nucleosynthesis with CMB Inputs: Probing the Early Universe and Light Element Astrophysics
• Gravitational waves: Classification, Methods of detection, Sensitivities, and Sources
• Primordial backgrounds of relic gravitons
• Big Bang nucleosynthesis, matter-antimatter regions, extra relativistic species, and relic gravitational waves
• Four-Neutrino Mixing and Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis
• Relic neutrino asymmetries and big bang nucleosynthesis in a four neutrino model
• Generalized Limits to the Number of Light Particle Degrees of Freedom from Big Bang Nucleosynthesis
• Implications of the ${\nu }_{\mu }\to {\nu }_s$ solution to the atmospheric neutrino anomaly for early Universe cosmology
• Three Neutrino $\Delta m^2$ scales and Singular Seesaw Mechanism
• Light Unstable Sterile Neutrino
• Hierarchical Four-Neutrino Oscillations With a Decay Option
• Effect of Finite Mass on Primordial Nucleosynthesis
• Interacting Hot Dark Matter
• Texture of a Four-Neutrino Mass Matrix
• Theoretical predictions of surface light element abundances in protostellar and pre-Main Sequence phase
• Double Threefold Degeneracies for Active and Sterile Neutrinos
• Neutrino Oscillations from Dirac and Majorana Masses
• Dark Matter and Neutrinos