LATE-TIME DISSIPATION OF PRIMORDIAL BARYON-NUMBER FLUCTUATIONS AND NUCLEOSYNTHESIS

Primordial baryon-number fluctuations can be damped at temperatures 20 keV when the photon mean free path becomes larger than the high-density-region length scale. This dissipation process may result in mixing of the high- and low-density material on a time scale comparable to or shorter than that of the universal expansion. The nucleosynthesis yields in inhomogeneous cosmologies can be altered by this process for any ©b. Li7 can be reduced to an abundance consistent with observations of Population II halo stars and the abundances of Be9 and B10 can be reduced by several orders of magnitude. © 1990 The American Physical Society.