We present a simple method for determining the (correlated) uncertainties of the light element abundances expected from big bang nucleosynthesis, which avoids the need for lengthy Monte Carlo simulations. Our approach helps to clarify the role of the different nuclear reactions contributing to a particular elemental abundance and makes it easy to implement energy-independent changes in the measured reaction rates. As an application, we demonstrate how this method simplifies the statistical estimation of the nucleon-to-photon ratio through comparison of the standard BBN predictions with the observationally inferred abundances.

• Received 16 March 1998

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.58.063506