Assessing Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis

Abstract

Systematic uncertainties in the light-element abundances and their evolution make a rigorous statistical assessment difficult. However, using Bayesian methods we show that the following statement is robust: the predicted and measured abundances are consistent with 95\% credibility only if the baryon-to-photon ratio is between $2\times 10^{-10}$ and $6.5\times 10^{-10}$ and the number of light neutrino species is less than 3.9. Our analysis suggests that the ${}^4$He abundance may have been systematically underestimated.

7 pages, LaTeX(2.09), 6 postscript figures (attached). A postscript version with figures can be found at ftp://astro.uchicago.edu/pub/astro/copi/assessing_BBN . (See the README file for details)

References in corpus (1)

• Big Bang Nucleosynthesis in Crisis?

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