Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2001/iii/paper-67/2/ii/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2001 iii Paper 67 2 ii Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Use , so counts deuterium nuclei per baryon, not baryons bound into deuterium. For the radiative capture reaction, chemical equilibrium and the zero photon chemical potential give . Dividing the three nonrelativistic Maxwell--Boltzmann number densities removes all chemical potentials:Here and . The binding convention in this PDF is a negative mass defect, . The positive nuclear binding energy is , so the abundance is enhanced by , not by .
Since , insert the baryon-to-photon ratio and the photon number density . This givesAt equal nucleon mass in the prefactors, , the deuterium equilibrium abundance simplifies toThe dimensionless prefactor is about . These expressions describe thermal equilibrium; residual primordial deuterium after nuclear reactions cease must instead be obtained from the reaction kinetics.
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