No crisis for big bang nucleosynthesis

Contrary to a recent claim, the inferred primordial abundances of the light elements are quite consistent with the expectations from standard big bang nucleosynthesis when attention is restricted to direct observations rather than results from chemical evolution models. The number of light neutrino (or equivalent particle) species (

N_\nu

) can be as high as 4.53 if the nucleon-to-photon ratio (

\eta

) is at its lower limit of

1.65 \times 10^{-10}

, as constrained by the upper bound on the deuterium abundance in high redshift quasar absorption systems. Alternatively, with

N_\nu = 3

,

\eta

can be as high as

8.90 \times 10^{-10}

if the deuterium abundance is bounded from below by its interstellar value.

14.60.Lm
26.35.+c
98.80.Ft
astrophysics: model
light nucleus: production
production: light nucleus
neutrino: flavor
numerical calculations: Monte Carlo

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