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Anthropic considerations in nuclear physics

  • Review
  • Physics & Astronomy
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Science Bulletin

Abstract

In this short review, I discuss the sensitivity of the generation of the light and the life-relevant elements such as carbon and oxygen under changes of the parameters of the Standard Model pertinent to nuclear physics. Chiral effective field theory allows for a systematic and precise description of the forces between two, three and four nucleons. In this framework, variations under the light quark masses and the electromagnetic fine-structure constant can also be consistently calculated. Combining chiral nuclear effective field theory with Monte Carlo simulations allows to further calculate the properties of nuclei, in particular of the Hoyle state in carbon, that plays a crucial role in the generation of the life-relevant elements in hot, old stars. The dependence of the triple-alpha process on the fundamental constants of nature is calculated, and some implications for our anthropic view of the Universe are discussed.

本文讨论了较轻的且和生命相关的元素, 例如碳元素和氧元素的产生对于跟核 物理相关的标准模型中的参数变化的敏感性. 手征有效场理论可以系统精确地 描述两核、三核以及四核之间的作用力, 同时可以计算其随轻夸克质量和电磁精 细结构常数的变化. 运用手征核有效场理论和蒙特卡罗模拟方法可以进一步计 算原子核的性质, 特别是碳原子的Hoyle 态, 该态在炽热远古星体产生与生命相 关元素的过程中起了重要作用. 另外, 文章讨论了3α 过程对自然界基本常数的 依赖性, 以及关于宇宙的人择观点的一些启示.

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Notes

  1. Throughout this review, we work in two-flavor QCD with up and down quarks with masses \(m_u\) and \(m_d\), respectively. In most cases, it suffices to work in the isospin limit \(m_u = m_d \equiv m_q\), but at one instance we also have to consider strong isospin breaking with \(m_u \ne m_d\).

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Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Steve Weinberg, whose query on the resonance condition triggered part of the work done here. I would like to thank my NLEFT collaborators Evgeny Epelbaum, Hermann Krebs, Timo Lähde, Dean Lee and also Gautam Rupak for a most enjoyable collaboration. Some part of this work was done in collaboration with Julian Berengut, Victor Flambaum, Christoph Hanhart, Jenifer Nebreda and Jose Ramon Peláez. I would also like to thank Zhizhong Xing for giving me the opportunity to write this review. I am grateful to Evgeny Epelbaum, Dean Lee and Qiang Zhao for a careful reading of the manuscript. This work was supported in part by DFG and NSFC (Sino-German CRC 110), Helmholtz Association (contract VH-VI-417), BMBF (grant 05P12PDFTE), the EU (HadronPhysics3 project) and LENPIC (DEC-2103/10/M/ST2/00420). Computational resources provided by the Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC) at the Forschungszentrum Jülich and by RWTH Aachen.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Helmholtz-Institut für Strahlen- und Kernphysik (Theorie) and Bethe Center for Theoretical Physics, Universität Bonn, D-53155, Bonn, Germany

    Ulf-G. Meißner

  2. Institute for Advanced Simulation (IAS-4), Institut für Kernphysik (IKP-3), Jülich Center for Hadron Physics, JARA HPC and JARA FAME, Forschungszentrum Jülich, D-52425, Jülich, Germany

    Ulf-G. Meißner

  3. Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics China, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China

    Ulf-G. Meißner

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Correspondence to Ulf-G. Meißner.

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This review was invited by Professor Zhi-zhong Xing.

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Meißner, UG. Anthropic considerations in nuclear physics. Sci. Bull. 60, 43–54 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11434-014-0670-2

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