Revisiting nucleosynthesis constraints on primordial magnetic fields

In view of several conflicting results, we reanalyze the effects of magnetic fields on the primordial nucleosynthesis. In the case the magnetic field is homogeneous over a horizon volume, we show that the main effects of the magnetic field are given by the contribution of its energy density to the Universe expansion rate and the effect of the field on the electrons quantum statistics. Although, in order to get an upper limit on the field strength, the weight of the former effect is numerically larger, the latter cannot be neglected. Including both effects in the PN code we get the upper limit B ≤ 1 × 1011 Gauss at the temperature T = 109 K. We generalize the considerations to case when instead the magnetic is inhomogeneous on the horizon length. We show that in these cases only the effect of the magnetic field on the electron statistics is relevant. If the coherence length of the magnetic field at the end of the PN is in the range 10 ⪡ L0 ⪡ 1011 cm our upper limit is B ≤ 1 × 1012 Gauss.