English

Cosmological Parameter Estimation with a Joint-Likelihood Analysis of the Cosmic Microwave Background and Big Bang Nucleosynthesis

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2025-12-01 v2 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

We present the first joint-likelihood analysis of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) and Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) data. Bayesian inference is performed on the baryon abundance and the effective number of neutrino species, NeffN_{\rm eff}, using a CMB Boltzmann solver in combination with LINX, a new flexible and efficient BBN code. We marginalize over Planck nuisance parameters and nuclear rates to find Neff=3.080.13+0.13,2.940.16+0.16,N_{\rm{eff}} = 3.08_{-0.13}^{+0.13},\,2.94 _{-0.16}^{+0.16}, or 2.980.13+0.142.98_{-0.13}^{+0.14}, for three separate reaction networks. This framework enables robust testing of the Lambda Cold Dark Matter paradigm and its variants with CMB and BBN data.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2408.14531,
  title  = {Cosmological Parameter Estimation with a Joint-Likelihood Analysis of the Cosmic Microwave Background and Big Bang Nucleosynthesis},
  author = {Cara Giovanetti and Mariangela Lisanti and Hongwan Liu and Siddharth Mishra-Sharma and Joshua T. Ruderman},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2408.14531},
  year   = {2025}
}