Primordial Nucleosynthesis

Primordial nucleosynthesis, or Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN), is one of the three evidences for the Big-Bang model, together with the expansion of the Universe and the Cosmic Microwave Background. There is a good global agreement over a range of nine orders of magnitude between abundances of 4 He, D, 3 He and 7 Li deduced from observations, and calculated in primordial nucleosynthesis. This comparison was used to determine the baryonic density of the Universe. For this purpose, it is now superseded by the analysis of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation anisotropies. However, there remain, a yet unexplained, discrepancy of a factor ≈3, between the calculated and observed lithium primordial abundances, that has not been reduced, neither by recent nuclear physics experiments, nor by new observations. Big-Bang nucleosynthesis, that has been used, to first constrain the baryonic density, and the number of neutrino families, remains, a valuable tool to probe the physics of the early Universe.