Abstract
We present an improved calculation of the light element abundances in the framework of Big Bang nucleosynthesis as a function of the Higgs vacuum expectation value v. We compare the methods of our calculation to previous literature including the recently published work of Burns et al. [1]. The PDG result for the 4He abundance can be explained within 2σ by −0.014 ≤ δv/v ≤ 0.026, for deuterium we find the constraint −0.005 ≤ δv/v ≤ −0.001. These bounds are more stringent than what was found earlier.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Bernard Metsch for helpful discussions. We also thank Anne-Katherine Burns and Marc Sher for clarifications on their work. This work was supported in part by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 101018170), by DFG and NSFC through funds provided to the Sino-German CRC 110 “Symmetries and the Emergence of Structure in QCD” (NSFC Grant No. 11621131001, Project-ID 196253076 — TRR 110). The work of UGM was supported in part by the CAS President’s International Fellowship Initiative (PIFI) (Grant No. 2018DM0034).
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Meyer, H., Meißner, UG. Improved constraints on the variation of the weak scale from Big Bang nucleosynthesis. J. High Energ. Phys. 2024, 74 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP06(2024)074
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP06(2024)074