Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2012/iii/paper-53/2/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2012 iii Paper 53 2 Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-07
The density bound on a relativistically decoupled massive relic is already decisive for a conventional near-critical cosmological density budget: the thermal pair alone gives . The same additional relativistic pair increases the effective number of neutrino species by one during nucleosynthesis and raises the primordial helium mass fraction, so its expansion effect supplies another constraint. Thus a stable, fully thermalized MeV-decoupling neutrino pair of this mass is incompatible with the usual cosmological density budget.
This conclusion is not a prohibition on every particle with that mass. Earlier decoupling followed by entropy dilution, a reduced production abundance, or interactions that change the assumed thermal history can alter both tests. At fixed mass, requiring this pair to contribute no more than the supplied critical density would demand a number density at most of the standard value, or a thermal temperature at most of the standard neutrino temperature. No numerical abundance or exclusion independent of these assumptions follows from the mass and equal particle-antiparticle counts alone.
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