Measuring the Primordial Deuterium Abundance during the Cosmic Dark Ages
- Creators
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Sigurdson, Kris
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Furlanetto, Steven R.
Abstract
We discuss how measurements of fluctuations in the absorption of cosmic microwave background photons by neutral gas at redshifts z[approximate]7–200 could reveal the primordial deuterium abundance of the Universe. The strength of the cross-correlation of brightness-temperature fluctuations in the redshifted 21-cm line of hydrogen with those in the redshifted 92-cm line of deuterium is proportional to the value of the deuterium-to-hydrogen ratio [D/H] fixed during big bang nucleosynthesis. Although challenging, this measurement would provide the cleanest possible determination of [D/H], free from contamination by structure formation processes at lower redshifts. We additionally report our result for the thermal spin-change cross section in deuterium-hydrogen scattering.
Additional Information
© 2006 The American Physical Society (Received 10 May 2005; published 29 August 2006) We thank A. Dalgarno, J. Gair, M. Hayden, M. Kamionkowski, T. Pearson, M. Reynolds, D. Scott, and B. Zygelman for discussions. K.S. acknowledges the support of the Canadian NSERC. This work was supported in part by NASA Grant No. NAG5-9821 and DOE Grant No. DE-FG03-92-ER40701.Attached Files
Published - SIGprl06.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 5061
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:SIGprl06
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
- NASA
- NAG5-9821
- Department of Energy (DOE)
- DE-FG03-92-ER40701
- Created
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2006-09-25Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-08Created from EPrint's last_modified field