Big bang nucleosynthesis, matter-antimatter regions, extra relativistic species, and relic gravitational waves

Provided that matter-antimatter domains are present at the onset of big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN), the number of allowed additional relativistic species increases, compared to the standard scenario when matter-antimatter domains are absent. The extra relativistic species may take the form of massless fermions or even massless bosons, such as relic gravitons. The number of additional degrees of freedom compatible with BBN depends, in this framework, upon the typical scale of the domains and the antimatter fraction. Since the presence of matter-antimatter domains allows a reduction of the neutron to proton ratio prior to the formation of ^4He, large amounts of radiationlike energy density are allowed. Our results are compared with other constraints on the number of supplementary relativistic degrees of freedom and with different nonstandard BBN scenarios where the reduction of the neutron to proton ratio occurs via a different physical mechanism. The implications of our considerations for the upper limits on stochastic gravitational waves backgrounds of cosmological origin are outlined.