A New Measurement of the Primordial Abundance of Deuterium: Toward Convergence with the Baryon Density from the Cosmic Microwave Background?

By M. Pettini, D. Bowen. 2001

158 citations recorded by the source corpus.

From the analysis of the near-UV spectrum of the quasar (QSO)2206-199, obtained with a long series of exposures with the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph on the Hubble Space Telescope, we deduce a value D/H = (1.65 ± 0.35) × 10-5 (1 σ error) for the abundance of deuterium in the zabs = 2.0762 damped Lyα system (DLA) along this sight line. The velocity structure of this absorber is very simple, and its neutral hydrogen column density N(H I) is accurately known; the error in D/H is mostly due to the limited signal-to-noise ratio of the spectrum. Since this is also one of the most metal-poor DLAs, with metal abundances ~1/200 of solar, the correction due to the astration of D is expected to be insignificant, and the value we deduce should be essentially the primordial abundance of deuterium. When all (six) available measurements of D/H in high-redshift QSO absorbers are considered, we find that the three DLAs, N(H I) is measured most reliably, give consistently lower values than the three Lyman limit systems. We point out that the weighted mean of the DLA measurements, D/H = (2.2 ± 0.2) × 10-5, yields a baryon density ΩBh2 = 0.025 ± 0.001, which is within ~1 σ of the value deduced from the analysis of the cosmic microwave background angular power spectrum, and is still consistent with the present-day D/H and models of Galactic chemical evolution. Future observations of D I absorption in other DLAs are needed to establish whether our finding reflects a real advantage of DLAs over other classes of QSO absorbers for the measurement of D or if it is just a statistical fluctuation.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/08cf263224c24a16d2d18ad39fa457aa2648b541

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. M. Pettini
2. C. Steidel
3. E. Skillman
4. K. Olive
5. Y. Izotov
6. T. Thuan
7. Naveen A. Reddy
8. A. Shapley

In Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

1. A. Lewis
2. K. Olive
3. E. Skillman
4. A. Meiksin
5. C. Steidel
6. A. Coc
7. A. Ferrara
8. UK.

Citations in the corpus

• Systematic Effects and a New Determination of the Primordial Abundance of 4He and dY/dZ from Observations of Blue Compact Galaxies (2003, background): “Much progress has been achieved during the last years in the precise measurement of the deuterium abundance in high-redshift, low-metallicity Ly absorption systems (Burles & Tytler 1998a, 1998b; O’Meara et al. 2001; Pettini & Bowen 2001; Kirkman et al. 2003).”
• A new, precise measurement of the primordial abundance of deuterium (2012, background): “Some spectra are of inferior S/N ratio than others, such as that of the zabs = 2.07624 DLA in Q2206−199 which, because of the lower redshift of this absorber, necessitated observations at ultraviolet wavelengths with the Hubble Space Telescope (Pettini & Bowen 2001).”
• The First Cosmic Structures and Their Effects (2004, background): “The baryon contribution to matter, Ωbh 2 ≈ 0.020 − 0.030, is derived through measurements of CMB anisotropies (Balbi et al. 2000, 2001; Pryke et al. 2002) and D/H abundance in quasars spectra (Tytler et al. 2000; Pettini & Bowen 2001; Levshakov et al. 2002).”
• The Cosmological Baryon Density from the Deuterium-to-Hydrogen Ratio in QSO Absorption Systems: D/H toward Q1243+3047 (2003, methodology): “Since then, Pettini & Bowen (2001) have found D in a fourth QSO, Q2206–199 and quote a D/H value which is much less than the previous measurements, while D’Odorico et al. (2001) and Levshakov et al. (2002) have presented two very different measurements of D/H towards a 5th QSO, Q0347–3819.”
• One Percent Determination of the Primordial Deuterium Abundance (2017, background): “…some 20 years later; even now, only a handful detections of the neutral deuterium (D i) absorption lines have been made (Burles & Tytler 1998a,b; Pettini & Bowen 2001; O’Meara et al. 2001; Kirkman et al. 2003; Crighton et al. 2004; O’Meara et al. 2006; Pettini et al. 2008; Fumagalli, O’Meara, &…”
• Organic molecules in protoplanetary disks around T Tauri and Herbig Ae stars (2004, background): “All values are significantly higher than the elemental [D]/[H] abundance of 1.5×10−5 (Pettini & Bowen 2001; Moos et al. 2002).”
• Deuterium abundance in the most metal-poor damped Lyman alpha system: converging on Ωb,0h2 (2008, methodology): “The Hubble Space Telescope-STIS spectrum of this object published by Pettini & Bowen (2001) is of lower S/N ratio and resolution than the other six cases in Table 3 which were all obtained with ground-based 8–10 m telescopes and echelle spectrographs.”
• Updated Big Bang nucleosynthesis confronted to WMAP observations and to the abundance of light elements (2003, background): “2 we plot D/H observations at high redshift (Burles & Tytler, 1998; Tytler et al. 1996; O’Meara et al. 2001, D’Odorico et al. 2001; Pettini & Bowen 2001; Kirkman et al. 2003) which are thought to be representative of the D primordial abundances together with those inferred from SBBN calculations…”