Time-varying coupling strengths, nuclear forces and unification

Abstract

We investigate the dependence of the nucleon-nucleon force in the deuteron system on the values of coupling strengths at high energy, which will in general depend on the geometry of extra dimensions. The stability of deuterium at all times after nucleosynthesis sets a bound on the time variation of the ratio of the QCD confinement scale to light quark masses. We discuss the relation between this ratio, which is exponentially sensitive to high-energy couplings, and fundamental parameters, in various classes of unified theory. The binding energy of the deuteron is also expected to have an important effect on nucleosynthesis and we quantify this effect.