A New Approach to Systematic Uncertainties and Self-Consistency in Helium Abundance Determinations

TL;DR

This paper presents an improved method for determining primordial helium abundance by integrating physical parameters and updating atomic data, leading to more accurate and consistent results with potential for further refinement.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive approach that combines hydrogen reddening correction with helium abundance calculation, incorporating new atomic data and addressing uncertainties.

Findings

Updated helium abundance Y_p = 0.2561 ± 0.0108

Neutral hydrogen correction raises helium abundance estimates

Potential for 25% reduction in abundance error with higher resolution spectra

Abstract

Tests of big bang nucleosynthesis and early universe cosmology require precision measurements for helium abundance determinations. However, efforts to determine the primordial helium abundance via observations of metal poor H II regions have been limited by significant uncertainties. This work builds upon previous work by providing an updated and extended program in evaluating these uncertainties. Procedural consistency is achieved by integrating the hydrogen based reddening correction with the helium based abundance calculation, i.e., all physical parameters are solved for simultaneously. We include new atomic data for helium recombination and collisional emission based upon recent work by Porter et al. and wavelength dependent corrections to underlying absorption are investigated. The set of physical parameters has been expanded here to include the effects of neutral hydrogen collisional emission. Because of a degeneracy between the solutions for density and temperature, the precision of the helium abundance determinations is limited. Also, at lower temperatures (T \lesssim 13,000 K) the neutral hydrogen fraction is poorly constrained resulting in a larger uncertainty in the helium abundances. Thus the derived errors on the helium abundances for individual objects are larger than those typical of previous studies. The updated emissivities and neutral hydrogen correction generally raise the abundance. From a regression to zero metallicity, we find Y_p as 0.2561 \pm 0.0108, in broad agreement with the WMAP result. Tests with synthetic data show a potential for distinct improvement, via removal of underlying absorption, using higher resolution spectra. A small bias in the abundance determination can be reduced significantly and the calculated helium abundance error can be reduced by \sim 25%.