Testing Primordial Abundances With Sterile Neutrinos

Understand

The mixing between sterile and active neutrinos is taken into account in the calculation of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis.

• The abundances of primordial elements, like D, 3He, 4He and 7Li, are calculated by including sterile neutrinos, and by using finite chemical potentials.
• It is found that the resulting theoretical abundances are consistent with WMAP data on baryonic densities, and with limits of LSND on mixing angles, only if 7Li is excluded from the statistical analysis of theoretical and experimental results.