Cosmic baryon fraction Created 2026-10-06 Updated 2026-11-05
The cosmic baryon fraction is the ratio of mean baryonic matter density to total matter density. Assigning this fraction to a halo is a simplifying assumption; cooling, ejection and other baryonic processes can change the halo's retained gas and stellar fractions. A baryon conversion efficiency becomes a stellar-to-total-halo mass ratio only after multiplying by the applicable baryon fraction.
Cosmological baryon density Created 2026-10-13 Updated 2026-11-05
The cosmological baryon density is the mass density in baryonic matter, including hydrogen and helium. Up to nuclear binding-energy and composition corrections it is the proton mass times the baryon number density. The baryon-to-photon ratio links that number density to the photon number density. Larger baryon density increases nuclear reaction rates and permits the deuterium bottleneck to end earlier.
The gravitational lensing mass includes dark matter, hot intracluster gas, stars, and any other material in the projected aperture. Most is not stellar: in the literal convention above the stellar fraction is only .
Assume the cluster shares the cosmic cosmic baryon fraction, , and compare the same aperture for all components. ThenNeglecting stars entirely would give . Thus the assumed hot gas dominates the baryonic matter, and the remainder is dark matter. The budget is consistent: stars are about of the inferred baryonic matter, and all components sum to .
For a thermal scale, take gas extent and mean particle mass with for ionized gas. A simple spherical virial theorem estimate with gas binding energy and thermal kinetic energy givesThis is the scale of a very hot, massive X-ray emitting galaxy cluster. The numerical prefactor depends on the radial mass density profile, gas distribution and boundary pressure; for example an isothermal-sphere estimate gives about . Moreover is a projected aperture mass at , whereas the estimate needs a spherical enclosed mass at ; the given data do not determine that conversion. The quoted temperature is therefore an order-of-magnitude estimate, not a uniquely measured value. Nor do the data determine the total gas mass outside the Einstein ring without a profile. The gas budget above pertains to the matched aperture under the cosmic-fraction assumption.