Abstract
In this Chapter we discuss the application of Boltzmann equation in cosmology. In particular, we address Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN), recombination of protons and electrons in neutral hydrogen atoms and the relic abundance of CDM. Our main references are Dodelson (Modern cosmology. Academic Press, Amsterdam, 2003), Kolb and Turner (Front Phys 69:1–547, 1990) and Daniel Baumann’s lecture notes (Chap. 3). See also Bernstein (Kinetic theory in the expanding universe. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988).
L’umanità non sopporta il pensiero che il mondo sia nato per caso, per sbaglio. Solo perché quattro atomi scriteriati si sono tamponati sull’autostrada bagnata
(Humanity cannot bear the thought that the world was born by accident, by mistake. Just because four mindless atoms crashed on the wet highway)
Umberto Eco, Il Pendolo di Foucault
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
This occurs in some DM particle models. For example a \(m = 100\) GeV WIMP chemically decouples at 5 GeV and kinetically decouples at 25 MeV. See e.g. Profumo et al. (2006).
- 3.
It attains a fixed abundance if it is a stable particle, of course. If not it disappears.
- 4.
It is still unclear whether neutrino is a Majorana fermion, i.e. a fermion which is its own anti-particle, or a Dirac fermion, i.e. a fermion which is distinct from its anti-particle.
- 5.
This exponential weight comes from Poisson distribution, which governs stochastic processes such as the \(\beta \)-decay. We derive it in Chap. 12.
- 6.
One can think of different cross sections and thus find CDM candidates lighter than WIMPs. See e.g. Profumo (2017). This possibility is also called WIMPless miracle.
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Piattella, O. (2018). Thermal History. In: Lecture Notes in Cosmology. UNITEXT for Physics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95570-4_3
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