The cosmic lithium problem: an observer's perspective

Abstract

Using the cosmological constants derived from WMAP, the standard big bang nucleosynthesis (SBBN) predicts the light elements primordial abundances for 4He, 3He, D, 6Li and 7Li. These predictions are in satisfactory agreement with the observations, except for lithium which displays in old warm dwarfs an abundance depleted by a factor of about 3. Depletions of this fragile element may be produced by several physical processes, in different stellar evolutionary phases, they will be briefly reviewed here, none of them seeming yet to reproduce the observed depletion pattern in a fully convincing way.