Cosmological Constraints on Late-time Entropy Production

Abstract

We investigate cosmological effects concerning the late-time entropy production due to the decay of non-relativistic massive particles. The thermalization process of neutrinos after the entropy production is properly solved by using the Boltzmann equation. If a large entropy production takes place at late time t$\simeq$ 1 sec, it is found that a large fraction of neutrinos cannot be thermalized. This fact loosens the tight constraint on the reheating temperature T_R from the big bang nucleosynthesis and T_R could be as low as 0.5 MeV. The influence on the large scale structure formation and cosmic microwave background anisotropies is also discussed.

Comments: 4 pages, using RevTeX and five postscript figures, comments added, to appear in Phys. Rev. Lett