Did something decay, evaporate, or annihilate during Big Bang nucleosynthesis?
By K. Jedamzik. 2004
224 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Results of a detailed examination of the cascade nucleosynthesis resulting from the putative hadronic decay, evaporation, or annihilation of a primordial relic during the big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) era are presented. It is found that injection of energetic nucleons around cosmic time 10{sup 3} s may lead to an observationally favored reduction of the primordial {sup 7}Li/H yield by a factor 2-3. Moreover, such sources also generically predict the production of the {sup 6}Li isotope with magnitude close to the as yet unexplained high {sup 6}Li abundances in low-metallicity stars. The simplest of these models operates at a fractional contribution to the baryon density {omega}{sub b}h{sup 2} > or approx. 0.025, slightly larger than that inferred from standard BBN. Though further study is required, such sources, as, for example, due to the decay of the next-to-lightest supersymmetric particle into GeV gravitinos or the decay of an unstable gravitino in the TeV range of abundance {omega}{sub Gh}{sup 2}{approx}5x10{sup -4} show promise to explain both the {sup 6}Li and {sup 7}Li abundances in low-metallicity stars.
Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6e42b137fa184b5a4f38d8a18b4a5d0dc5dfcbcf
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