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Constraining density fluctuations with big bang nucleosynthesis in the era of precision cosmology

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Barrow, JD 
Scherrer, RJ 

Abstract

We reexamine big bang nucleosynthesis with large-scale baryon density inhomogeneities when the length scale of the density fluctuations exceeds the neutron diffusion length (∼10⁷-10⁸ cm at BBN), and the amplitude of the fluctuations is sufficiently small to prevent gravitational collapse. In this limit, the final light element abundances can be determined by simply mixing the abundances from regions with different baryon/photon ratios without interactions. We examine gaussian, lognormal, and gamma distributions for the baryon/photon ratio, η. We find that the deuterium and lithium-7 abundances increase with the RMS fluctuation in η, while the effect on helium-4 is much smaller. We show that these increases in the deuterium and lithium-7 abundances are a consequence of Jensen's inequality, and we derive analytic approximations for these abundances in the limit of small RMS fluctuations. Observational upper limits on the primordial deuterium abundance constrain the RMS fluctuation in η to be less than 17% of the mean value of η. This provides us with a new limit on the graininess of the early universe.

Description

Keywords

5106 Nuclear and Plasma Physics, 51 Physical Sciences

Journal Title

Physical Review D

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

2470-0010
2470-0029

Volume Title

98

Publisher

American Physical Society (APS)
Sponsorship
Science and Technology Facilities Council (ST/P000673/1)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (ST/L000636/1)