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arXiv · 2305.15849

The electromagnetic fine-structure constant in primordial nucleosynthesis revisited

Ulf-G. Meißner·Bernard Ch. Metsch·Helen Meyer
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Abstract

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 $^{2}$H and $^{4}$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.

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Ulf-G. Meißner, Bernard Ch. Metsch, Helen Meyer. 2023-05-25. The electromagnetic fine-structure constant in primordial nucleosynthesis revisited. https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.15849

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