English

The Nuclear Impact on Cosmology: The $H_0\hbox{-}\Omega$ Diagram

Astrophysics 2014-10-13 v1

Abstract

The \HOmega\ diagram is resurrected to dramatically illustrate the nature of the key problems in physical cosmology today and the role that nuclear physics plays in many of them. In particular it is noted that the constraints on \OmegaB\ from big bang nucleosynthesis do not overlap with the constraints on \OmegaVis\ nor have significant overlap with the lower bound on Ω\Omega from cluster studies. The former implies that the bulk of the baryons are dark and the later is the principle argument for non-baryonic dark matter. A comparison with hot x-ray emitting gas in clusters is also made. The lower bound on the age of the universe from globular cluster ages (hydrogen burning in low mass stars) and from nucleocosmochronology also illustrates the Hubble constant requirement H066\HunitsH_0 \le 66 \Hunits for Ω0=1\Omega_0 = 1\@. It is also noted that high values of H0H_0 (80\Hunits\sim 80\Hunits) even more strongly require the presence of non-baryonic dark matter. The lower limit on H0H_0 (38\Hunits\ge 38\Hunits) from carbon detonation driven type~Ia supernova constrains long ages and only marginally allows \OmegaB\ to overlap with \OmegaClus. Diagrams of \HOmega\ for Λ0=0\Lambda_0=0 and Λ00\Lambda_0\neq 0 are presented to show that the need for non-baryonic dark matter is independent of Λ\Lambda.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/9504026,
  title  = {The Nuclear Impact on Cosmology: The $H_0\hbox{-}\Omega$ Diagram},
  author = {Craig J. Copi and David N. Schramm},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/9504026},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

10 pages, LaTeX(2.09), 4 figures. A nicely formatted postscript version of the text with encapsulated figures can be found at ftp://astro.uchicago.edu/pub/astro/HOmega (see the README file for details)