Nucleosynthesis and the mass of the tau neutrino

Preprint

1 March 1996

preprint
Published by arXiv in arXiv

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.hep-ph/9603201

Abstract

The primordial abundance of long-lived heavy Majorana neutrinos is calculated from the full Boltzmann equation. Inclusion of scattering reactions drastically change the predicted abundance of a heavy neutrino species. This loosens the well known mass constraint on MeV neutrinos from Big Bang nucleosynthesis, and allows for the existence of a Majorana tau neutrino with mass m > 11 MeV. Further experimental efforts are therefore needed to investigate the range 11 MeV < m < 24 MeV. Some interesting cosmological consequences of an MeV nu_tau are also pointed out.

Keywords

PRIMORDIAL ABUNDANCE
MAJORANA NEUTRINOS
NUCLEOSYNTHESIS
HEAVY MAJORANA
TAU NEUTRINO
SCATTERING

All Related Versions

Version 1, 1996-03-01, ArXiv
Published version: Physical Review Letters, 76 (16), 2848.

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