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H.W. Moos, K.R. Sembach, S.D. Friedman, J.W. Kruk (JHU), G. Sonneborn (GSFC), A. Vidal-Madjar, G. Hebrard (CNRS/IAP), J.L. Linsky (JILA/NIST), FUSE Science Team
The abundance of deuterium relative to hydrogen is a sensitive measure of the cosmological baryon density. The Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer Mission (FUSE) is performing a comprehensive set of abundance measurements for sight lines in the local interstellar medium (LISM) in order to determine definitive values of D/H and its variability on different scales. These results will provide fundamental knowledge about the chemical evolution of the gas, the mixing of the interstellar medium, and other astrophysical processes relevant to understanding the D/H ratio. The accompanying papers describe the first set of FUSE D/H measurements for the LISM. Eventually, this study will increase the number of high precision D/H measurements for the local interstellar medium by an order of magnitude. It will serve as a benchmark for other FUSE studies of D/H in the Milky Way Galaxy and also for studies of D/H at high redshift where the main objective is to determine the primordial value of D/H produced by Big Bang nucleosynthesis. This paper will provide an overview of the accompanying papers and compare the results for individual sight lines.
This work is based on data obtained for the FUSE Guaranteed Time Team by the NASA-CNES-CSA FUSE mission operated for NASA by the Johns Hopkins University. Financial support to U. S. participants has been provided by NASA contract NAS5-32985.