Speaker
Dr
Thomas Dent
(Heidelberg)
Description
We analyze the effect of variation of fundamental couplings and mass scales on
primordial nucleosynthesis in a systematic way. The first step establishes the
response of primordial element abundances to the variation of a large number of
nuclear physics parameters, including nuclear binding energies. We find a strong
influence of the $n-p$ mass difference (for the \hefo\ abundance), of the nucleon
mass (for deuterium) and of $A=3,4,7$ binding energies (for \heth, \lisi\ and \lise).
A second step relates the nuclear parameters to the parameters of the Standard Model
of particle physics. The deuterium, and, above all, \lise\ abundances depend strongly
on the average light quark mass $\hat{m}\equiv (m_u+m_d)/2$. We calculate the
behaviour of abundances when variations of fundamental parameters obey relations
arising from grand unification. We also discuss the possibility of a substantial
shift in the lithium abundance while the deuterium and \hefo\ abundances are only
weakly affected.
Author
Dr
Thomas Dent
(Heidelberg)
Co-authors
Prof.
Christof Wetterich
(Heidelberg)
Mr
Steffen Stern
(Heidelberg)
