A statistical reanalysis of 143 Y_p determinations from 1960s-2022 reveals long-term convergence with change points in the mid-2000s and early 2010s, plus significant non-independence among many extragalactic H II region measurements.
The primordial abundance of 4He: evidence for non-standard big bang nucleosynthesis
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abstract
We present a new determination of the primordial helium mass fraction Yp, based on 93 spectra of 86 low-metallicity extragalactic HII regions, and taking into account the latest developments concerning systematic effects. These include collisional and fluorescent enhancements of HeI recombination lines, underlying HeI stellar absorption lines, collisional and fluorescent excitation of hydrogen lines and temperature and ionization structure of the HII region. Using Monte Carlo methods to solve simultaneously for the above systematic effects, we find the best value to be Yp=0.2565+/-0.0010(stat.)+/-0.0050(syst.). This value is higher at the 2sigma level than the value given by Standard Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (SBBN), implying deviations from it. The effective number of light neutrino species Nnu is equal to 3.68^+0.80_-0.70 (2sigma) and 3.80^+0.80_-0.70 (2sigma) for a neutron lifetime tau(n) equal to 885.4+/-0.9 s and 878.5+/-0.8 s, respectively, i.e. it is larger than the experimental value of 2.993+/-0.011.
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Fifty years of primordial helium abundances: A statistical reanalysis
A statistical reanalysis of 143 Y_p determinations from 1960s-2022 reveals long-term convergence with change points in the mid-2000s and early 2010s, plus significant non-independence among many extragalactic H II region measurements.