Primordial Nucleosynthesis

Thermal History of the Universe: Review of Statistical Mechanics

• distribution functions
• Bose-Einstein and Fermi-Dirac statistics
• limiting cases: non- and ultra-relativistic particles

Big Bang Nucleosynthesis: Early History

• Alpher, Bethe, and Gamow (1948), classic group portrait
• Hayashi (1950)
• Alpher, Follin, and Hermann (1953)

Big Bang Nucleosynthesis Theory

1. Initial Conditions
2. Weak Freezeout
3. Deuterium Bottleneck
4. Birth of the Light Elements
   • nuclear network
   • predictions summarized: Schramm plot