Rf. Sawyer, TEMPERATURE-DEPENDENT WAVE-FUNCTION RENORMALIZATION AND WEAK INTERACTION RATES PRIOR TO NUCLEOSYNTHESIS, Physical review. D. Particles and fields, 53(8), 1996, pp. 4232-4236
We present a general prescription for the effects of medium-dependent
wave function renormalization on rates of reactions involving a Dirac
particle. The result is applied to the corrections of order e(2) to th
e weak interaction rates prior to nucleosynthesis, due to the thermal
photon and e(+)e(-) baths. The results coming from the standard ''fini
te temperature'' corrections in the literature, a decrease of the pred
icted He abundance by 0.16%, are found to be replaced by an increase o
f 0.02%. But there are indications that plasma corrections that are no
t included at the e(2) level may be more important than these correcti
ons.