Primordial Nucleosynthesis with Massive Tau Neutrinos

Abstract

A massive long-lived tau neutrino in the MeV regime modifies the primordial light-element abundances predicted by big-bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) calculations. This effect has been used to derive limits on the tau neutrino mass. Because recently the observational situation has become somewhat confusing and, in part, intrinsically inconsistent, we reconsider the BBN limits on the tau neutrino mass. To this end we use our newly developed BBN code to calculate the primordial abundances as a function of the tau neutrino mass and of the cosmic baryon density eta. We derive concordance regions in the eta - tau-neutrino-mass - plane for several sets of alleged primordial abundances. In some cases a concordance region exists only for a nonvanishing tau neutrino mass. At the present time BBN does not provide clear evidence for or against a tau neutrino mass.