The DOI matches its Crossref record.
Primordial nucleosynthesis - A critical comparison of theory and observation
Abstract
Primordial nucleosynthesis is reexamined in the context of a detailed comparison of theory and observation. A new argument is presented to show how the observed abundances of D and 3He can be used to derive a lower bound to the nucleon density. The authors define a conservative range for the nucleon-to-photon ratio: η = (3 - 10)×10-10. New observations of 7Li are consistent with the abundances of D and 3He and help to define a reasonable range: η = (4 - 7)×10-10. In either of these ranges the predicted and observed abundances of D, 3He, and 7Li are all in concordance. The upper bounds correspond to ΩN ≤ 0.14 - 0.19, and it is concluded that nucleons fail to close the universe by at least a factor of 5 - 7. The authors review the recent observational data on 4He and conclude that there is complete consistency between the predicted abundance of 4He and those of the other light elements.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cited by
Primordial nucleosynthesis: theory and observations
Olive, K. A., Steigman, G., & Walker, T. P. (2000) · Physics Reports · doi:10.1016/s0370-1573(00)00031-4 · Cited by 448
Self-citationBig-bang nucleosynthesis enters the precision era
Schramm, D. N., & Turner, M. S. (1998) · Reviews of Modern Physics · doi:10.1103/revmodphys.70.303 · Cited by 353
Self-citationCosmological baryon diffusion and nucleosynthesis
Applegate, J. H., Hogan, C. J., & Scherrer, R. J. (1987) · Physical Review D · doi:10.1103/physrevd.35.1151 · Cited by 246
Introduction to big bang nucleosynthesis and modern cosmology
Mathews, G. J., Kusakabe, M., & Kajino, T. (2017) · International Journal of Modern Physics E · doi:10.1142/s0218301317410014 · Cited by 39
Metadata
- Authors
- Yang, J., Turner, M. S., Schramm, D. N., Steigman, G., & Olive, K. A.
- Venue
- The Astrophysical Journal
- Publisher
- American Astronomical Society
- Published
- 1984-06
- Volume
- 281
- Pages
- 493
- ISSN
- 0004-637X (ISSN-L)
- 1538-4357
- OpenAlex
- W2029175773
- Cited by
- 667
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 99.05
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Primordial nucleosynthesis - A critical comparison of theory and observation. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1086/162123
- The paper
- Yang, J., Turner, M. S., Schramm, D. N., Steigman, G., & Olive, K. A. (1984). Primordial nucleosynthesis - A critical comparison of theory and observation. The Astrophysical Journal. https://doi.org/10.1086/162123
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
