Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2010 / ii / Paper 3 / 15D / Solution

For a nonrelativistic particle, $E(p)=m{c}^2+p^2/(2m)$. The Gaussian integral yieldsIndeed ${\int }_0^{\infty }{p}^2{e}^{-p^2/(2m{k}_{B}T)}dp=\sqrt{\pi }(2m{k}_{B}T{)}^{3/2}/4$, which combines with $4\pi /h^3$ to give the prefactor. For the two species this givesChemical equilibrium imposes ${\mu }_a+{\mu }_{\alpha }={\mu }_b+{\mu }_{\beta }$. If the two massless bath species have zero chemical potentials, then ${\mu }_a={\mu }_b$; their masses alone do not imply this chemical-potential condition.

Weak reactions such as $n+{\nu }_e\leftrightarrow p+e^{-}$, with leptons treated as relativistic, interconvert neutrons and protons. Negligible lepton chemical potentials give approximately $n_n/n_p=\exp [-(m_n-m_p)c^2/(k_{B}T)]$, since their degeneracies and masses are nearly equal. Equilibrium favors protons increasingly as temperature falls. But the weak reaction rate decreases faster than the expansion rate and eventually falls below it: cosmological weak freeze-out prevents the ratio from following its equilibrium exponential to zero. Free neutrons subsequently decay, reducing the frozen ratio further.

In Big Bang nucleosynthesis, cooling eventually makes deuterium survive photodissociation. Nuclear reactions then build helium through deuterium and the light intermediate nuclei, locking almost all surviving neutrons into stable helium-four. Neglecting binding-energy corrections and taking $r=n_n/n_p\le 1$, each helium nucleus uses two neutrons and two protons, so $n_{\mathrm{He}}=n_n/2$ andFor example $r=1/7$ gives a helium mass fraction $1/4$, with the remaining baryons predominantly hydrogen.