Primordial Helium Abundance: A Reanalysis of the Izotov-Thuan Spectroscopic Sample

Abstract

A reanalysis is made for the helium abundance determination for the Izotov-Thuan (2004) spectroscopic sample of extragalactic H II regions. We find that the effect of underlying stellar absorption of the He I lines, which is more important for metal poor systems, affects significantly the inferred primordial helium abundance $Y_p$ obtained in the zero metallicity limit and the slope of linear extrapolation, $dY/dZ$. This brings $Y_p$ from $0.234\pm0.004$ to $0.250\pm 0.004$ and $dY/dZ=4.7\pm 1.0$ to $1.1\pm 1.4$. Conservatively, this indicates the importance of the proper understanding of underlying stellar absorption for accurate determinations of the primordial helium abundance to the error of $\delta Y_p\simeq 0.002-0.004$.