Primordial Nucleosynthesis in Light of WMAP
By Richard H. Cyburt, B. Fields, K. Olive. 2003
221 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Abstract Big bang nucleosynthesis has long provided the primary determination of the cosmic baryon density Ω B h 2 , or equivalently the baryon-to-photon ratio, η. Recently, data on CMB anisotropies have become increasingly sensitive to η. The comparison of these two independent measures provides a key test for big bang cosmology. The first release of results from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) marks a milestone in this test. With the precision of WMAP, the CMB now offers a significantly stronger constraint on η. We discuss the current state of BBN theory and light element observations (including their possible lingering systematic errors). The resulting BBN baryon density prediction is in overall agreement with the WMAP prediction, an important and non-trivial confirmation of hot big bang cosmology. Going beyond this, the powerful CMB baryometer can be used as an input to BBN and one can accurately predict the primordial light element abundances. By comparing these with observations one can obtain new insight into post-BBN nucleosynthesis processes and associated astrophysics. Finally, one can test the possibility of nonstandard physics at the time of BBN, now with all light elements available as probes. Indeed, with the WMAP precision η, deuterium is already beginning to rival 4He's sensitivity to nonstandard physics, and additional D/H measurements can improve this further.
Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/78efbc635554b633ec65e5f5b5278339ffb5329b
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Citations in the corpus
- Updated Big Bang nucleosynthesis confronted to WMAP observations and to the abundance of light elements (2003, methodology): “Recently, Cyburt et al. (2003) have also compared BBN and WMAP data.”
- Primordial Black Holes as Dark Matter: Recent Developments (2020, background): “[21] Richard Cyburt, Brian Fields, and Keith Olive, “Primordial nucleosynthesis in light of WMAP,” Phys.”
- A new approach to systematic uncertainties and self-consistency in helium abundance determinations (2010, methodology): “With the WMAP determination of the baryon density of the universe (Komatsu et al. 2009), BBN has become a zero-parameter theory (Cyburt et al. 2002, 2003), leading to relatively precise predictions of the light element abundances of D, 3He, 4He, and 7Li (Cyburt et al. 2001; Coc et al. 2002, 2004;…”
- Standing on the Shoulders of Dwarfs: the Kepler Asteroseismic LEGACY Sample. II. Radii, Masses, and Ages (2016, methodology): “The enrichment law used ∆Y/∆Z = 2 (e.g. Chiosi & Matteucci 1982) and a primordial helium abundance Yp = 0.2484 (Cyburt et al. 2003).”
- Implications of WMAP Observations on Li Abundance and Stellar Evolution Models (2004, background): “3 of Cyburt et al. 2003) leads to N(7Li)/N(H) = 3.82+0.73 −0.60 × 10 −10.”
- Primordial black holes as dark matter candidates (2021, background): “course, all black holes are dark but the ones which form at late times (and definitely exist) could not provide all the dark matter because they form from baryons and are subject to the well-known big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) constraint that baryons can have at most 5% of the critical density [11]”