Looking at the Spite plateau from a different perspective

Abstract

Thanks to the accurate determination of the baryon density of the Universe by the recent cosmic microwave background experiments, updated predictions of the standard model of Big Bang nucleosynthesis yield the initial abundances of the primordial light elements with an unprecedented precision (Bennet et al. 2003; Spergel et al. 2003; Coc et al. 2004; Cyburt 2004). In the case of $^7$Li, the CMB+SBBN value is significantly higher than the generally reported abundances for Pop II stars along the Spite plateau. Here, we report on the very recent results we obtained by revisiting a large sample of literature Li data in halo stars that we assembled following some strict criteria on the quality of the original analyses published from the early 90s onwards.