Speaker
Dr
Ryan Cooke
(UC Santa Cruz)
Description
We are currently in an exciting era of precision cosmology. With the release of the cosmic microwave background data recorded by the Planck satellite, we are now in a position to accurately test the standard model of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. In this talk, I will present a new, precise measure of the primordial abundance of deuterium - the most accurate measurement to date - derived from a redshift ~3 metal-poor damped Lyα system. In light of this new measurement, we have performed a careful reanalysis of the best systems where the primordial deuterium abundance can be estimated. These precise measures, when analysed in conjunction with the Planck data, now place strong limits on the effective number of neutrino species in the early Universe, and offers new insight into physics beyond the standard model. I will also discuss our ongoing survey to obtain new precision measures of the primordial deuterium abundance.
