EMPRESS. VIII. A New Determination of Primordial He Abundance with Extremely Metal-Poor Galaxies: A Suggestion of the Lepton Asymmetry and Implications for the Hubble Tension

TL;DR

This study refines the primordial helium abundance measurement using extremely metal-poor galaxies, revealing potential lepton asymmetry and implications for the Hubble tension by constraining neutrino species and baryon-to-photon ratio.

Contribution

It presents new NIR spectroscopy data for EMPGs, improves primordial He abundance estimates, and explores cosmological implications including lepton asymmetry and Hubble tension.

Findings

Primordial He abundance estimated as 0.2370 with uncertainties.

Constraints on neutrino species and lepton asymmetry suggest deviations from the Standard Model.

Results indicate potential resolution of the Hubble tension within 1-2 sigma.

Abstract

The primordial He abundance $Y_\mathrm{P}$ is a powerful probe of cosmology. Currently, $Y_\mathrm{P}$ is best determined by observations of metal-poor galaxies, while there are only a few known local extremely metal-poor ($<0.1 Z_\odot$) galaxies (EMPGs) having reliable He/H measurements with HeI$\lambda$10830 near-infrared (NIR) emission. Here we present deep Subaru NIR spectroscopy for 10 EMPGs. Combining the existing optical data, He/H values of 5 out of the 10 EMPGs are reliably derived by the Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm. Adding the existing 3 EMPGs and 51 moderately metal-poor ($0.1-0.4 Z_\odot$) galaxies with reliable He/H estimates, we obtain $Y_\mathrm{P}=0.2370^{+0.0034}_{-0.0033}$ by linear regression in the $\mathrm{(He/H)}-\mathrm{(O/H)}$ plane, where we increase the number of EMPGs from 3 to 8 anchoring He/H of the most metal-poor gas in galaxies. Although our $Y_\mathrm{P}$ measurement and previous measurements are consistent, our result is slightly ($\sim 1\sigma$) smaller due to our EMPGs. With our $Y_\mathrm{P}$ and the existing primordial deuterium $D_\mathrm{P}$ measurement, we constrain the effective number of neutrino species $N_\mathrm{eff}$ and the baryon-to-photon ratio $\eta$ showing $\gtrsim 1-2\sigma$ tensions with the Standard Model and Planck Collaboration et al. (2020). Motivated by the tensions, we allow the degeneracy parameter of electron-neutrino $\xi_e$ to vary as well as $N_\mathrm{eff}$ and $\eta$. We obtain $\xi_e = 0.05^{+0.03}_{-0.02}$, $N_\mathrm{eff}=3.11^{+0.34}_{-0.31}$, and $\eta\times10^{10}=6.08^{+0.06}_{-0.06}$ from the $Y_\mathrm{P}$ and $D_\mathrm{P}$ measurements with a prior of $\eta$ taken from Planck Collaboration et al. (2020). Our constraints suggest a lepton asymmetry and allow for a high value of $N_\mathrm{eff}$ within the $1\sigma$ level, which could mitigate the Hubble tension.