Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2002/iii/paper-71/2/a/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2002 iii Paper 71 2 a Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Use radiation-era , with . The stipulated interaction rate is , not . Decoupling therefore givesAt the threshold , the assumed is self-consistent with the stated high-temperature condition. Smaller masses decouple nonrelativistically, with .
For an thermal equilibrium species with zero chemical potential, , while . ThusThe numerical coefficient before rounding is about for and . This is mass-dependent fermion freeze-out. It assumes the rate maintains chemical equilibrium until sudden cosmological particle freeze-out and that entropy is conserved afterwards. Elastic scattering alone would not justify the thermal equilibrium number-density estimate. For decoupling below the high-temperature range, changes in effective degrees of freedom modify the numerical estimate; the requested formula treats them as roughly constant.
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