Figures from the lecture on Theoretical Astroparticle Physics


Big Bang Nucleosynthesis

1) Abundances in full equilibrium: Fig. 1 .
2) Observed vs. predicted abundances (from Fields and Sarkar, arXiv:astro-ph/0601514): Fig. 2 . The shaded boxes show the observationally allowed ranges of eta if only statistical errors are included, while the open boxes also include systematic uncertainties. The widths of the colored bands indicate the theoretical uncertainty of the calculation.
3) Updated results 2012 (from the 2012 Particle Data Group) Fig. 3 . Now the open boxes only include statistical errors, the (more relevant) colored boxes include the (often dominant) systematic uncertainties. The two shaded bands show the ``concordance'' value of eta from BBN alone (hatched) and from the CMB (cross-hatched); the latter determination is clearly more precise.
4) Updated results 2018 (from the 2018 Particle Data Group) Fig.4 . Now only the colored boxes are shown, which include the (often dominant) systematic uncertainties. The two shaded bands show the ``concordance'' value of eta from BBN alone (pink) and from the CMB (blue); the latter determination is clearly more precise. The main change from the 2012 version is the significantly reduced error of the D/H determination.
5) Updated PDG results 2024 Fig.5 . The changes from the 2018 version are quite small, the field has reached some maturity. Nevertheless occasionally controversies pop up about some measurements of primordial isotope abundances.
6) Constraints on abundance and lifetime of a decaying massive particle X, for different values of the dekadic log of its hadronic branching ratio; from Jedamzik, hep-ph/0604251: Fig. 6 . The (magenta) solid lines are based on a more conservative, hence reliable, interpretation of the observations, while the (blue) dashed lines are based on a more aggressive interpretation. Please do not confuse Bh=0 (i.e. no hadronic decay) with log10Bh=0, i.e. purely hadronic decays of X.

Decoupling of WIMPs
Numerical solution of the Boltzmann equation for constant sigma v: Fig. 1