Conceptual

Cosmological Lower Bound on the Reheating Temperature from Low-Reheating Scenarios

Deriving the strongest constraint to date on the cosmic reheating temperature by modeling how a delayed, O(MeV) onset of the radiation-dominated era distorts relic-neutrino thermalization and thereby the light-element yields of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis, the radiation density seen by the cosmic microwave background, and the growth of large-scale structure. A joint Bayesian fit of these datasets with improved non-thermal neutrino distribution functions yields a reheating temperature above 5.96 MeV at 95% confidence.