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) 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. 5 . 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