Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2015/iii/paper-53/2/1/ii/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2015 iii Paper 53 2 1 ii Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-20
A collisionless relativistic species redshifts with . The coupled plasma instead obeys cosmological entropy conservation, , and is heated relative to a decoupled species as massive particles annihilate. The effective number of relativistic energy degrees of freedom and effective number of relativistic entropy degrees of freedom coincide while all species share a common relativistic temperature. Use for the Standard Model bath, excluding the already decoupled extra species.
Just before ordinary neutrino decoupling, the coupled bath contains two photon states, four electron/Positron states and six ordinary neutrino/antineutrino states. ThereforeThe extra-neutrino temperature relative to that bath is then . After the ordinary neutrinos decouple, electron/Positron annihilation heats only the photon bath: its entropy count changes from to . Both neutrino populations miss that last heating, soThis is the two-stage entropy dilution of an early-decoupled neutrino. Numerically . Relative to ordinary relic neutrinos it is cooler by .
Let count the extra neutrino's populated helicity and antiparticle states. For one conventional neutrino plus antineutrino species , the same state count as photons. The Fermi-Dirac distribution supplies the number-density factor, soThus a two-state species has about of the photon number density. Stating explicitly also covers a different choice of populated states.
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