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QED corrections to the big-bang nucleosynthesis reaction rates

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arxiv 1904.07795 v2 pith:7U34N6FI submitted 2019-04-16 astro-ph.CO hep-phnucl-th

QED corrections to the big-bang nucleosynthesis reaction rates

classification astro-ph.CO hep-phnucl-th
keywords reactionratescorrectionsnuclearphotonbig-bangbringsenergies
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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We compute radiative corrections to nuclear reaction rates that determine the outcome of the Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN). Any nuclear reaction producing a photon with an energy above $2m_e$ must be supplemented by the corresponding reaction where the final state photon is replaced by an electron-positron pair. We find that pair production brings a typical $0.2 \%$ enhancement to photon emission rates, resulting in a similar size corrections to elemental abundances. The exception is $^4{\rm He}$ abundance, which is insensitive to the small changes in the nuclear reaction rates. We also investigate the effect of vacuum polarisation on the Coulomb barrier, which brings a small extra correction when reaction rates are extrapolated from the measured energies to the BBN Gamow peak energies.

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Cited by 3 Pith papers

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