Nuclear physics experiments give reaction rates that, via modelling and comparison with primordial abundances, constrain cosmological parameters. The error bars of a key reaction, dpg, were tightened in 2020, bringing to light discrepancies between d
ifferent analyses and calling for more accurate measurements of other reactions.
Recent measurements of the D(p,$gamma)^3$He, nuclear reaction cross-section and of the neutron lifetime, along with the reevaluation of the cosmological baryon abundance from cosmic microwave background (CMB) analysis, call for an update of abundance
predictions for light elements produced during the big-bang nucleosynthesis (BBN). While considered as a pillar of the hot big-bang model in its early days, BBN constraining power mostly rests on deuterium abundance. We point out a new $simeq1.8sigma$-tension on the baryonic density, or equivalently on the D/H abundance, between the value inferred on one hand from the analysis of the primordial abundances of light elements and, on the other hand, from the combination of CMB and baryonic oscillation data. This draws the attention on this sector of the theory and gives us the opportunity to reevaluate the status of BBN in the context of precision cosmology. Finally, this paper presents an upgrade of the BBN code PRIMAT.
We revisit the decoupling of neutrinos in the early universe with flavour oscillations. We rederive the quantum kinetic equations which determine the neutrino evolution based on a BBGKY-like hierarchy, and include for the first time the full collisio
n term, with both on- and off-diagonal terms for all relevant reactions. We focus on the case of zero chemical potential and solve these equations numerically. We also develop an approximate scheme based on the adiabatic evolution in the matter basis. In fact, the large difference between the oscillations and cosmological time scales allows to consider averaged flavour oscillations which can speed up the numerical integration by two orders of magnitude, when combined with a direct computation of the differential system Jacobian. The approximate numerical scheme is also useful to gain more insight into the physics of neutrino decoupling. Including the most recent results on plasma thermodynamics QED corrections, we update the effective number of neutrinos to $N_{mathrm{eff}} = 3.0440$. Finally we study the impact of flavour oscillations during neutrino decoupling on the subsequent primordial nucleosynthesis.
Within cosmological perturbation theory, the cosmic microwave background anisotropies are usually computed from a Boltzmann hierarchy coupled to the perturbed Einstein equations. In this setup, one set of multipoles describes the temperature anisotro
pies, while two other sets, of electric and magnetic types, describe the polarization anisotropies. In order to reduce the number of multipoles types needed for polarization, and thus to speed up the numerical resolution, an optimal hierarchy has been proposed in the literature for Einstein-Boltzmann codes. However, it has been recently shown that the separability between directional and orbital eigenfunctions employed in the optimal hierarchy is not correct in the presence of spatial curvature. We investigate how the assumption of separability affects the optimal hierarchy, and show that it introduces relative errors of order $Omega_K$ with respect to the full hierarchy. Despite of that, we show that the optimal hierarchy still gives extremely good results for temperature and polarization angular spectra, with relative errors that are much smaller than cosmic variance even for curvatures as large as $|Omega_K|=0.1$. Still, we find that the polarization angular spectra from tensor perturbations are significantly altered when using the optimal hierarchy, leading to errors that are typically of order $50 |Omega_K| %$ on that component.
In the primordial Universe, neutrino decoupling occurs only slightly before electron-positron annihilations, leading to an increased neutrino energy density with order $10^{-2}$ spectral distortions compared to the standard instantaneous decoupling a
pproximation. However, there are discrepancies in the literature on the impact it has on the subsequent primordial nucleosynthesis, in terms of both the magnitude of the abundance modifications and their sign. We review how neutrino decoupling indirectly affects the various stages of nucleosynthesis, namely, the freezing out of neutron abundance, the duration of neutron beta decay, and nucleosynthesis itself. This allows to predict the sign of the abundance variations that are expected when the physics of neutrino decoupling is taken into account. For simplicity, we ignore neutrino oscillations, but we conjecture from the detailed interplay of neutrino temperature shifts and distortions that their effect on final light element abundances should be subdominant.
In the literature different approaches have been proposed to compute the anisotropies of the astrophysical gravitational wave background. The different expressions derived, although starting from our work Cusin, Pitrou, Uzan, Phys.Rev.D96, 103019 (20
17) [1], seem to differ. This article compares the various theoretical expressions proposed so far and provides a separate derivation based on a Boltzmann approach. We show that all the theoretical formula in the literature are equivalent and boil down to the one of Ref. [1] when a proper matching of terms and integration by parts are performed. The difference between the various predictions presented for anisotropies in a cosmological context can only lie in the astrophysical modeling of sources, and neither in the theory nor in the cosmological description of the large scale structures. Finally we comment on the gauge invariance of expressions.
We present a comprehensive construction of scalar, vector and tensor harmonics on maximally symmetric three-dimensional spaces. Our formalism relies on the introduction of spin-weighted spherical harmonics and a generalized helicity basis which, toge
ther, are ideal tools to decompose harmonics into their radial and angular dependencies. We provide a thorough and self-contained set of expressions and relations for these harmonics. Being general, our formalism also allows to build harmonics of higher tensor type by recursion among radial functions, and we collect the complete set of recursive relations which can be used. While the formalism is readily adapted to computation of CMB transfer functions, we also collect explicit forms of the radial harmonics which are needed for other cosmological observables. Finally, we show that in curved spaces, normal modes cannot be factorized into a local angular dependence and a unit norm function encoding the orbital dependence of the harmonics, contrary to previous statements in the literature.
A powerful result in theoretical cosmology states that a subset of anisotropic Bianchi models can be seen as the homogeneous limit of (standard) linear cosmological perturbations. Such models are precisely those leading to Friedmann spacetimes in the
limit of zero anisotropy. Building on previous works, we give a comprehensive exposition of this result, and perform the detailed identification between anisotropic degrees of freedom and their corresponding scalar, vector, and tensor perturbations of standard perturbation theory. In particular, we find that anisotropic models very close to open (i.e., negatively curved) Friedmann spaces correspond to some type of super-curvature perturbations. As a consequence, provided anisotropy is mild, its effects on all types of cosmological observables can always be computed as simple extensions of the standard techniques used in relativistic perturbation theory around Friedmann models. This fact opens the possibility to consistently constrain, for all cosmological observables, the presence of large scale anisotropies on the top of the stochastic fluctuations.
Precision on primordial abundances, deduced from observations, have now reached the percent level for 4He and deuterium. Precision on big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) predictions should, hence, reach the same level. The uncertainty on the 4He mass frac
tion is strongly affected by theoretical uncertainties on the weak reaction rates that interconvert neutrons with protons. All these corrections have been calculated in a self-consistent manner and implemented in a new, and public, Mathematica code PRIMAT, together with an extensive data base of reaction rates. Both can be obtained at http://www2.iap.fr/users/pitrou/primat.htm.
This article explores the properties (amplitude and shape) of the angular power spectrum of the anisotropies of the astrophysical gravitational wave background (AGWB) focusing on the signatures of the astrophysical models describing sub-galactic phys
ics. It demonstrates that while some parameters have negligible impact others, and in particular the stellar evolution models, the metallicity and the merger time delay distribution can result in relative differences of order 40% in the angular power spectrum of anisotropies in both the LIGO/Virgo and LISA frequency bands. It is also shown that the monopole and the anisotropic components of the AGWB are complementary and sensitive to different astrophysical parameters. It follows that AGWB anisotropies are a new observable with the potential to provide new astrophysical information that can not be accessed otherwise.
