Big bang nucleosynthesis as a probe of fundamental "constants"

Understand

Big Bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) is the earliest sensitive probe of the values of many fundamental particle physics parameters.

• We have found the leading linear dependences of primordial abundances on all relevant parameters of the standard BBN code, including binding energies and nuclear reaction rates.
• This enables us to set limits on possible variations of fundamental parameters.
• We find that 7Li is expected to be significantly more sensitive than other species to many fundamental parameters, a result which also holds for variations of coupling strengths in grand unified (GUT) models.