Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis and Galactic Chemical Evolution
Abstract
Deuterium is the best indicator of the baryon density; however, only its present abundance is known (and only locally) and its chemical evolution is intertwined with that of He. Because galactic abundances are spatially heterogeneous, mean chemical-evolution models are not well suited for extrapolating the pre-solar D and He abundances to their primeval values. We introduce a new approach which explicitly addresses heterogeneity, and show that the decade-old big-bang nucleosynthesis concordance interval based on D and He is robust.
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/9506094,
title = {Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis and Galactic Chemical Evolution},
author = {Craig J. Copi and David N. Schramm and Michael S. Turner},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/9506094},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
9 pages, LaTeX(2.09), 4 postscript figures (attached). A postscript version with figures can be found at ftp://astro.uchicago.edu/pub/astro/chem_evolution. (See the README file for details). REVISION: Numerous changes have been made to the text and the focus of the discussion has changed