Big bang nucleosynthesis and the baryon density of the universe
Jul 11, 1994
26 pages
Published in:
- Science 267 (1995) 192-199
e-Print:
- astro-ph/9407006 [astro-ph]
Report number:
- FERMILAB-PUB-94-174-A
Citations per year
Abstract: (arXiv)
Big-bang nucleosynthesis is one of the cornerstones of the standard cosmology. For almost thirty years its predictions have been used to test the big-bang model to within a fraction of a second of the bang. The concordance that exists between the predicted and observed abundances of D, He, He and Li provides important confirmation of the standard cosmology and leads to the most accurate determination of the baryon density, between 1.7 \times 10~{-31}\gcmm3 and 4.1\times 10~{-31}\gcmm3 (corresponding to between about 1\% and 14\% of critical density). This measurement of the density of ordinary matter is crucial to almost every aspect of cosmology and is pivotal to the establishment of two dark-matter problems: (i) most of the baryons are dark, and (ii) if total mass density is greater than about 14\% of the critical density as many determinations now indicate, the bulk of the dark matter must be ``nonbaryonic,'' comprised of elementary particles left from the earliest moments. We critically review the present status of primordial nucleosynthesis and discuss future prospects.- light nucleus: production
- production: light nucleus
- baryon: density
- dark matter
- numerical calculations: interpretation of experiments
- bibliography
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