Primordial nucleosynthesis for the new cosmology: Determining uncertainties and examining concordance

By Richard H. Cyburt. 2004

241 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) and the cosmic microwave background (CMB) have a long history together in the standard cosmology. The general concordance between the predicted and observed light element abundances provides a direct probe of the universal baryon density. Recent CMB anisotropy measurements, particularly the observations performed by the WMAP satellite, examine this concordance by independently measuring the cosmic baryon density. Key to this test of concordance is a quantitative understanding of the uncertainties in the BBN light element abundance predictions. These uncertainties are dominated by systematic errors in nuclear cross sections. We critically analyze the cross section data, producing representations that describe this data and its uncertainties, taking into account the correlations among data, and explicitly treating the systematic errors between data sets. Using these updated nuclear inputs, we compute the new BBN abundance predictions, and quantitatively examine their concordance with observations. Depending on what deuterium observations are adopted, one gets the following constraints on the baryon density: OmegaBh^2=0.0229\pm0.0013 or OmegaBh^2 = 0.0216^{+0.0020}_{-0.0021} at 68% confidence, fixing N_{\nu,eff}=3.0. Concerns over systematics in helium and lithium observations limit the confidence constraints based on this data provide. With new nuclear cross section data, light element abundance observations and the ever increasing resolution of the CMB anisotropy, tighter constraints can be placed on nuclear and particle astrophysics. ABRIDGED

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d78d9c43a41172c700219bcba104b6cae5b85acc

How researchers see this paper

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. K. Olive
2. E. Aver
3. Jean-Philippe Uzan
4. E. Skillman
5. B. Fields
6. A. Coc
7. C. Young
8. Tsung-Han Yeh

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. K. Olive
2. E. Skillman
3. E. Aver
4. B. Fields
5. Jean-Philippe Uzan
6. A. Coc
7. E. Vangioni
8. C. Young

Citations in the corpus

• Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis after Planck (2019, methodology): “Our choices for rates are those of [39], with modifications for those rates where new data exists in the BBN energy range.”
• Dark Matter: A Primer (2010, background): “0021, both which we will see accounts for only about 20% of the total matter density [15].”
• Precision big bang nucleosynthesis with improved Helium-4 predictions (2018, background): “They were identified in sensitivity studies, i.e. (Coc and Vangioni, 2010; Cyburt, 2004; Nollett and Burles, 2000) for the light elements (4He, D, 3He and 7Li) and Coc et al. (2012); Coc et al. (2014) for others and correspond to the main nuclear flow.”
• A new approach to systematic uncertainties and self-consistency in helium abundance determinations (2010, background): “…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; Cyburt 2004; Descouvemont et al. 2004; Cuoco et al. 2004; Serpico et al. 2004; Cyburt et al. 2008).”
• Solar fusion cross sections II: the pp chain and CNO cycles (2010, methodology): “One method that has been applied to the analysis of solar fusion cross section is that of Cyburt (2004) (see also Cyburt and Davids (2008)).”