Paper 4, Section I, D
Part II, 2013
List the relativistic species of bosons and fermions from the standard model of particle physics that are present in the early universe when the temperature falls to .
Which of the particles above will be interacting when the temperature is above and between , respectively?
Explain what happens to the populations of particles present when the temperature falls to .
The entropy density of fermion and boson species with temperature is , where is the number of relativistic spin degrees of freedom, that is,
Show that when the temperature of the universe falls below the ratio of the neutrino and photon temperatures will be given by