The electromagnetic fine-structure constant in primordial nucleosynthesis revisited

Meißner, Ulf-G.; Metsch, Bernard Ch.; Meyer, Helen

doi:10.1140/epja/s10050-023-01131-3

The electromagnetic fine-structure constant in primordial nucleosynthesis revisited

Ulf-G. Meißner
(
- Bonn U., HISKP and
- Bonn U. and
- Julich, Forschungszentrum and
- Tbilisi State U.
)
,
Bernard Ch. Metsch
(
- Julich, Forschungszentrum and
- Bonn U., HISKP
)
,
Helen Meyer
(
- Bonn U., HISKP and
- Bonn U.
)

May 25, 2023

26 pages

Published in:

Eur.Phys.J.A 59 (2023) 10, 223

Published: Oct 4, 2023

e-Print:

2305.15849 [hep-th]

DOI:

10.1140/epja/s10050-023-01131-3

View in:

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Abstract: (Springer)

We study the dependence of the primordial nuclear abundances as a function of the electromagnetic fine-structure constant

\alpha

, keeping all other fundamental constants fixed. We update the leading nuclear reaction rates, in particular the electromagnetic contribution to the neutron-proton mass difference pertinent to

\beta

-decays, and go beyond certain approximations made in the literature. In particular, we include the temperature-dependence of the leading nuclear reactions rates and assess the systematic uncertainties by using four different publicly available codes for Big Bang nucleosynthesis. Disregarding the unsolved so-called lithium-problem, we find that the current values for the observationally based

{}^{2}\text {H}

and

{}^{4}\text {He}

abundances restrict the fractional change in the fine-structure constant to less than

2\%

, which is a tighter bound than found in earlier works on the subject.

Note:

26 pages, 26 figures

fundamental constant: fine structure
nucleosynthesis: big bang
nucleosynthesis: primordial
electromagnetic
nuclear reaction
mass difference
temperature dependence
nucleus
fractional

References(193)

Figures(8)

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