The LBT Y$_\mathrm{p}$ Project IV: A New Value of the Primordial Helium Abundance

TL;DR

This paper presents a highly precise new measurement of the primordial helium abundance using high-quality observations of metal-poor H II regions, aligning well with Big Bang nucleosynthesis predictions.

Contribution

It introduces a new, robust determination of Yₚ based on an improved dataset and methodology, including updated emissivities and systematic error screening.

Findings

Primordial helium abundance Yₚ = 0.2458 ± 0.0013

Achieved 0.5% measurement precision

Results agree with Planck-based BBN predictions

Abstract

We present a new determination of the primordial helium abundance based on new, high-quality Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) observations of 54 metal-poor H II regions. These regions have been observed and analyzed uniformly. We also describe a number of updates to our methodology, including updated helium emissivities. Enabled by the large, high-quality dataset, we examine our sample targets for potential systematic errors, which could bias their results. We perform a standard 95% confidence level $\chi^2$ cut and find that a significantly larger fraction (47/54 = 87%) of our sample qualifies than for previous datasets. We also screen for quality and reliability, flagging targets which may introduce significant systematic errors, producing a dataset of 41 targets. In a significant breakthrough for the field, that dataset includes 15 high SNR targets with low metallicity (O/H < 4 $\times$ 10$^{-5}$). Due to this low-metallicity dataset, for the first time, a weighted average for determining the primordial helium abundance (Y$_\mathrm{p}$) is well-justified and produces a robust result. By weighted average of our 15 low-metallicity targets, we determine Y$_\mathrm{p}$ = 0.2458 $\pm$ 0.0013. This result achieves an unprecedented precision of 0.5%, and it is in good agreement with the BBN result, Y$_\mathrm{p}$ = 0.2467 $\pm$ 0.0002, based on the Planck determination of the baryon density.