blackboard

waynehu

Professor, Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
University of Chicago

Group Contact CV SnapShots
CMB Introduction '96   Intermediate '01   Polarization Intro '01   Cosmic Symphony '04   Polarization Primer '97   Review '02   Power Animations   Lensing   Power Prehistory   Legacy Material '96   PhD Thesis '95 Baryon Acoustic Oscillations Cosmic Shear Clusters
Transfer Function WMAP Likelihood Reionization PPF for CAMB Halo Mass Conversion Cluster Abundance
Intro to Cosmology [243] Cosmology I [legacy 321] Cosmology II [321] Current Topics [282] Galaxies and Universe [242] Radiative Processes [305] Research Preparation [307] GR Perturbation Theory [408] CMB [448] Cosmic Acceleration [449]

Dark Baryons

Key Concepts

Although we cannot yet claim that the second peak is as precisely measured as the first, we can say that (assuming it exists!) it is definitely of lower amplitude than the first:

The current data indicate that the baryon density is around &Omegabh2=0.02 This value is interesting since it is also the baryon density inferred from the abundance of deuterium at high redshift in quasar absorption lines and the theory of big-bang nucleosynthesis.  We now have an additional and independent line of evidence that there are missing baryons in the universe - i.e. that most the baryons are not in stars.   Once the second and higher peaks are definitively measured, CMB constraints on the baryon density will sharpen considerably (ultimately to a few percent accuracy).  Needless to say it will be interesting to see how these comparisons shape up as the data improve.