P. C. Stancil et al. 1998 ApJ 509 1 doi:10.1086/306473
P. C. Stancil1,2, S. Lepp3 and A. Dalgarno4
Show affiliationsThe chemistry of deuterium, as well as that of hydrogen and helium, in the postrecombination era of the expanding early universe is presented. A thorough survey of all potentially important gas-phase reactions involving the primordial elements produced in the Big Bang, with a particular emphasis on deuterium, is given. The reaction set, consisting of 144 processes, is used in a nonequilibrium chemistry model to follow the production of primordial molecules in the postrecombination era. It is found that significant deuterium fractionation occurs for HD+, HD, and H2D+, while the abundance of D+ is reduced compared to the proton abundance. Even with the enhanced fractionation of H2D+, its abundance is predicted to be too small to cause any interesting cosmological consequences, such as possible attenuation of spatial anisotropies in the cosmic background radiation field, detections of the epochs of reionization and reheating, or constraints on the primordial deuterium abundance. HD, being the second most abundant primordial molecule after H2, may play a role in subsequent structure formation because of its cooling radiation.
cosmic microwave background; early universe; molecular processes; nuclear reactions, nucleosynthesis, abundances
Issue 1 (1998 December 10)
Received 1998 March 2, accepted for publication 1998 July 16
P. C. Stancil et al. 1998 ApJ 509 1
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