by
Prof.Carlos Bertulani(Texas A&M University-Commerce)
→
Europe/Rome
INFN, Edificio C
INFN, Edificio C
Description
Big Bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) theory predicts the abundances of the light elements D, 3He, 4He and 7Li produced in the early
universe. The primordial abundances of D and 4He inferred from observational data are in good agreement with predictions,
however, the BBN theory overestimates the primordial 7Li abundance by about a factor of three. This is the so-called
“cosmological lithium problem”. Solutions to this problem using conventional astrophysics and nuclear physics have not been
successful over the past few decades, probably indicating the presence of new physics during the era of BBN. We have
investigated the impact on BBN predictions of adopting a generalized distribution to describe the velocities of nucleons in the
framework of a non-extensive statistics. This generalized velocity distribution is characterized by a parameter q, and reduces
to the usually assumed Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution for q = 1. We find excellent agreement between predicted and observed
primordial abundances of D, 4He and 7Li, suggesting a possible new solution to the cosmological lithium problem.
