Christel Smith
Arizona State University
Abstract:
I will discuss the current status of our understanding of primordial nucleosythesis in light of cosmic microwave background observations. I will also discuss the comparison of the predicted primordial light element abundance yields to the observationally determined values. In order to probe possible discrepancies between prediction and observation, I will present big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) calculations which included new nuclear and weak physics. I will also present some preliminary results using BBN calculations to constrain physics beyond the standard model.