A new, precise measurement of the primordial abundance of Deuterium

Abstract

The metal-poor damped Lyman alpha (DLA) system at z = 3.04984 in the QSO SDSSJ1419+0829 has near-ideal properties for an accurate determination of the primordial abundance of deuterium, (D/H)_p. We have analysed a high-quality spectrum of this object with software specifically designed to deduce the best fitting value of D/H and to assess comprehensively the random and systematic errors affecting this determination. We find (D/H)_DLA = (2.535 +/-0.05) x 10^(-5), which in turn implies Omega_b h^2 = 0.0223 +/- 0.0009, in very good agreement with Omega_b h^2 (CMB) = 0.0222 +/- 0.0004 deduced from the angular power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background. If the value in this DLA is indeed the true (D/H)_p produced by Big-Bang nucleosynthesis (BBN), there may be no need to invoke non-standard physics nor early astration of D to bring together Omega_b h^2 (BBN) and Omega_b h^2 (CMB). The scatter between most of the reported values of (D/H)_p in the literature may be due largely to unaccounted systematic errors and biases. Further progress in this area will require a homogeneous set of data comparable to those reported here and analysed in a self-consistent manner. Such an endeavour, while observationally demanding, has the potential of improving our understanding of BBN physics, including the relevant nuclear reactions, and the subsequent processing of 4He and 7Li through stars.

11 pages, 7 figures, Accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

References in corpus (13)

• Primordial Nucleosynthesis in the Precision Cosmology Era
• Damped Lyman Alpha Systems in Galaxy Formation Simulations
• Deuterium Abundance in the Most Metal-Poor Damped Lyman alpha System: Converging on Omega_baryons
• C, N, O Abundances in the Most Metal-Poor Damped Lyman alpha Systems
• On the Nature of Velocity Fields in High z Galaxies
• Constraining The Early-Universe Baryon Density And Expansion Rate
• Deuterium astration in the local disc and beyond
• Extinction and metal column density of HI regions up to redshift z~2
• The connection between metallicity and metal-line kinematics in (sub-)damped Lyman-alpha systems
• Two distinct halo populations in the solar neighborhood. IV. Lithium abundances
• HI content, metallicities and spin temperatures of damped and sub-damped Lyman alpha systems in the redshift desert (0.6 < z < 1.7)
• The Galactic Deuterium Abundance and Dust Depletion: Insights From an Expanded Ti/H Sample
• The lithium problem, a phenomenologist's perspective

Cited by in corpus (101)

• Planck 2015 results. XIII. Cosmological parameters
• Planck 2013 results. XVI. Cosmological parameters
• Big Bang Nucleosynthesis: 2015
• One percent determination of the primordial deuterium abundance
• Precision big bang nucleosynthesis with improved Helium-4 predictions
• Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis After Planck
• The Phenomenology of Right Handed Neutrinos
• Precision measures of the primordial abundance of deuterium
• Bounds on very low reheating scenarios after Planck
• Planck 2015 results. XV. Gravitational lensing
• A new determination of the primordial He abundance using the HeI 10830A emission line: cosmological implications
• Elucidating $\Lambda$CDM: Impact of Baryon Acoustic Oscillation Measurements on the Hubble Constant Discrepancy
• Dark Radiation constraints on minicharged particles in models with a hidden photon
• The Dawn of Chemistry
• Standard big bang nucleosynthesis and primordial CNO Abundances after Planck
• BBN And The CMB Constrain Neutrino Coupled Light WIMPs
• The primordial deuterium abundance of the most metal-poor damped Lyman-alpha system
• Cosmological Constraints on Very Dark Photons
• BBN And The CMB Constrain Light, Electromagnetically Coupled WIMPs
• The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Two-Season ACTPol Lensing Power Spectrum
• Neutrino energy transport in weak decoupling and big bang nucleosynthesis
• Probing Physics Beyond the Standard Model: Limits from BBN and the CMB Independently and Combined
• New reaction rates for improved primordial D/H calculation and the cosmic evolution of deuterium
• The UVES Spectral Quasar Absorption Database (SQUAD) Data Release 1: The first 10 million seconds
• Primordial nucleosynthesis
• The Impact of New d(p,γ)He3 Rates on Big Bang Nucleosynthesis
• The ESO UVES Advanced Data Products Quasar Sample - VI. Sub-Damped Lyman-$\alpha$ Metallicity Measurements and the Circum-Galactic Medium
• The strongest bounds on active-sterile neutrino mixing after Planck data
• The most metal-poor damped Lyman alpha systems: An insight into dwarf galaxies at high redshift
• Primordial 4He abundance: a determination based on the largest sample of HII regions with a methodology tested on model HII regions
• Cosmological constraints from baryon acoustic oscillations and clustering of large-scale structure
• Cosmological constraints on parametrized interacting dark energy
• The primordial deuterium abundance: subDLA system at $z_{\mathrm{abs}}=2.437$ towards the QSO J1444+2919
• Metal-Poor, Cool Gas in the Circumgalactic Medium of a z = 2.4 Star-Forming Galaxy: Direct Evidence for Cold Accretion?
• CO-dark molecular gas at high redshift: very large H${}_2$ content and high pressure in a low metallicity damped Lyman-alpha system
• A robust deuterium abundance; Re-measurement of the z=3.256 absorption system towards the quasar PKS1937-1009
• Multi-momentum and multi-flavour active-sterile neutrino oscillations in the early universe: role of neutrino asymmetries and effects on nucleosynthesis
• A precise deuterium abundance: Re-measurement of the z=3.572 absorption system towards the quasar PKS1937-101
• Higgs-Dilaton cosmology: Are there extra relativistic species?
• The composition of the protosolar disk and the formation conditions for comets
• Modified big bang nucleosynthesis with non-standard neutron sources
• The New $\nu$MSM : Radiative Neutrino Masses, keV-Scale Dark Matter and Viable Leptogenesis with sub-TeV New Physics
• Probing nuclear rates with Planck and BICEP2
• Null test for interactions in the dark sector
• Dark Matter
• The chemistry of the most metal-rich damped Lyman $\alpha$ systems at z$\sim 2$ II. Context with the Local Group
• Origin of Cosmic Chemical Abundances
• Simultaneous constraints on the number and mass of relativistic species
• Gravitino Decays and the Cosmological Lithium Problem in Light of the LHC Higgs and Supersymmetry Searches
• General limit on the relation between abundances of D and ${}^7$Li in big bang nucleosynthesis with nucleon injections
• Revised Big Bang Nucleosynthesis with long-lived negatively charged massive particles: updated recombination rates, primordial 9Be nucleosynthesis, and impact of new 6Li limits
• Search for the Infrared Emission Features from Deuterated Interstellar Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons
• What is half a neutrino? Reviewing cosmological constraints on neutrinos and dark radiation
• Introduction to Big Bang Nucleosynthesis and Modern Cosmology
• A model-independent reconstruction of dark sector interactions
• Effects of power law primordial magnetic field on big bang nucleosynthesis
• Effects of Long-lived 10 MeV Scale Sterile Neutrino on Primordial Elemental Abundances and Effective Neutrino Number
• HD/H2 as a probe of the roles of gas, dust, light, metallicity and cosmic rays in promoting the growth of molecular hydrogen in the diffuse interstellar medium
• Mirror matter can alleviate the cosmological lithium problem
• Lepton asymmetry, neutrino spectral distortions, and big bang nucleosynthesis
• Probing neutrino physics with a self-consistent treatment of the weak decoupling, nucleosynthesis, and photon decoupling epochs
• Big-Bang nucleosynthyesis: constraints on nuclear reaction rates, neutrino degeneracy, inhomogeneous and Brans-Dicke models
• Evolution of dispersion in the cosmic deuterium abundance
• A Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis Limit on the Neutral Fermion Decays into Neutrinos
• Separating astrophysical sources from indirect dark matter signals
• Nucleosynthesis Predictions and High-Precision Deuterium Measurements
• Big Bang Nucleosynthesis Constraint on Baryonic Isocurvature Perturbations
• Low-lying Resonances and Relativistic Screening in Big Bang Nucleosynthesis
• HST/COS Detection of Deuterated Molecular Hydrogen in a DLA at z = 0.18
• Big Bang Nucleosynthesis and the Helium Isotope Ratio
• A High Precision Survey of the D/H Ratio in the Nearby Interstellar Medium
• On general features of warm dark matter with reduced relativistic gas
• Chemical separation of primordial Li${}^{+}$ during structure formation caused by nanogauss magnetic field
• The explosion energy of early stellar populations: The Fe-peak element ratios in low metallicity damped Lyman-alpha systems
• Screening corrections to Electron Capture Rates and resulting constraints on Primordial Magnetic Fields
• Light Dark Matter and Dark Radiation
• Neutrino 2012: Outlook - theory
• Protostellar accretion in low mass metal poor stars and the cosmological lithium problem
• The Darkness of Spin-0 Dark Radiation
• On the concordance of cosmological data in the case of the generalized Chaplygin gas
• Probing dark photons in the early universe with big bang nucleosynthesis
• Revised Uncertainties in Big Bang Nucleosynthesis
• Observational constraints to a unified cosmological model
• Probing Lepton Asymmetry with 21 cm Fluctuations
• Dynamical Friction due to fuzzy dark matter on satellites described by axisymmetric logarithmic potentials
• The Physical Nature of the Most Metal-Poor Damped Lyman Alpha Systems
• Oscillating cosmic evolution and constraints on big bang nucleosynthesis in the extended Starobinsky model
• On the Metallicities and Kinematics of the Circumgalactic Media of Damped Ly$\alpha$ Systems at $z\sim 2.5$
• Analytic Study of Cosmological Perturbations in a Unified Model of Dark Matter and Dark Energy with a Sharp Transition
• Magnetic contributions in Bekenstein type models
• Big-bang nucleosynthesis through bound-state effects with a long-lived slepton in the NMSSM
• Effects of active-sterile neutrino mixing during primordial nucleosynthesis
• Parameterizing the SFC Baryogenesis Model
• Calculation of primordial abundances of light nuclei including a heavy sterile neutrino
• Big Bang Nucleosynthesis, the CMB, and the Origin of Matter and Space-Time
• Near-pristine gas at high redshifts: a window on early nucleosynthesis
• Scalar field dark matter with two components: combined approach from particle physics and cosmology
• On the baryon acoustic oscillation amplitude as a probe of radiation density
• Is PLANCK consistent with primordial deuterium measurements ?
• The Cosmological Effect of CMB/BAO Measurements
• Nucleosynthesis constraints on the faint vector portal