Cosmological variation of the deuteron binding energy, strong interaction, and quark masses from big bang nucleosynthesis

Abstract

We use big bang nucleosynthesis calculations and light element abundance data to constrain the relative variation of the deuteron binding energy since the Universe was a few minutes old, ␦QϭQ(BBN) ϪQ(present). Two approaches are used, first treating the baryon to photon ratio as a free parameter, but with the additional freedom of varying ␦Q, and second using the WMAP value of and solving only for ␦Q.Including varying Q yields a better fit to the observational data than imposing the present day value, rectifying the discrepancy between the 4 He abundance and the deuterium and 7 Li abundances, and yields good agreement with the independently determined WMAP . Using WMAP , the minimal deviation consistent with the data is significant at about the 4 level; ␦Q/QϭϪ0.019Ϯ0.005. If the primordial 4 He abundance lies towards the low end of values in the literature, this deviation is even larger and more statistically significant. Taking the light element abundance data at face value, our result may be interpreted as variation of the dimensionless ratio Xϭm s /⌳ QCD of the strange quark mass and strong scale: ␦X/Xϭ(1.1Ϯ0.3)ϫ10 Ϫ3 . These results provide a strong motivation for a more thorough exploration of the potential systematic errors in the light element abundance data.

Nuclear astrophysics of worlds in the string landscape

“…), and of the way the world would be once those thresholds are crossed (e.g., how does a neutron-stable world behave? ), as the masses are tuned via variations in w. The changes in w contemplated here-which lead to altogether qualitatively different worlds-are larger than those studied in the context of observational constraints on time or space variations in w or other Standard Model parameters in our universe (e.g., [21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31].) In addition this paper is does not actually apply anthropic reasoning or thoroughly explore the parameter space of possible worlds (e.g., [32]); it just explores the nuclear astrophysics of varying w with other parameters held fixed.…”

Effects of the variation of fundamental constants on Population III stellar evolution

“…In order to make such a connection, we make use of previous analyses relating the deuterium binding energy B D to fundamental constants. Using a potential model, the dependence of B D on the nucleon, σ-meson and ω-meson has been estimated (Flambaum & Shuryak 2002;Dmitriev & Flambaum 2003;Flambaum & Shuryak 2003;Dmitriev et al 2004;Coc et al 2007;Damour & Donoghue 2008). Furthermore, using the quark matrix elements for the nucleon, variations in B D can be related to variations in the light quark masses (particularly the strange quark) and thus to the corresponding quark Yukawa couplings and Higgs vev, v. The remaining sensitivity of B D to a dimensionful quantity is ascribed to the QCD scale Λ.…”

“…δ NN is used as a free parameter. The dependence of the deuterium binding energy on δ NN then offers us the possibility of relating this parameter to the gauge and Yukawa couplings if one matches this prediction to a potential model via the σ and ω meson masses (Flambaum & Shuryak 2003;Dmitriev et al 2004;Coc et al 2007;Damour & Donoghue 2008) or the pion mass, as suggested by Yoo & Scherrer (2003); Epelbaum et al (2003); Beane & Savage (2003).…”

Big bang nucleosynthesis constraints on universal extra dimensions and varying fundamental constants

“…However, the inclusion of varying B d (as in FIG. 1) changes these abundances dramatically, indicating the important role of the deuteron binding energy in BBN [7,8,18].…”

“…These effects separately cannot solve the whole inconsistency and a combination of them is needed, e.g. [17] (there are also works which use a single quantity to account for the inconsistency, such as a varying deuteron binding energy [18] and the Brans-Dicke cosmology with a varying Λ term [61]). But from a theoretical viewpoint, such combinations may not be necessary since, as mentioned in the introduction, the variation of one fundamental constant will often be accompanied by the variations of some other constants; these changes together would play the role of several effects combined.…”