The cosmic 6Li and 7Li problems and BBN with long-lived charged massive particles

Abstract

Charged massive particles (CHAMPs), when present during the Big Bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) era, may significantly alter the synthesis of light elements when compared to a standard BBN scenario. This is due to the formation of bound states with nuclei. This paper presents a detailed numerical and analytical analysis of such CHAMP BBN. All reactions important for predicting light-element yields are calculated within the Born approximation. Three priorly neglected effects are treated in detail:(a) photodestruction of bound states due to electromagnetic cascades induced by the CHAMP decay, (b) late-time efficient destruction/production of H2, Li6, and Li7 due to reactions on charge Z=1 nuclei bound to CHAMPs, and (c) CHAMP exchange between nuclei. Each of these effects may induce orders-of-magnitude changes in the final abundance yields. The study focusses on the impact of CHAMPs on a possible simultaneous solution of the Li6 and Li7 problems. It is shown that a priorly suggested simultaneous solution of the Li6 and Li7 problems for a relic decaying at tau_x = 1000 sec is only very weakly dependent on the relic being neutral or charged, unless its hadronic branching ratio is Bh << 10^-4 very small. By use of a Monte-Carlo analysis it is shown that within CHAMP BBN the existence of further parameter space for a simultaneous solution of the Li6 and Li7 problem for long decay times tau_x > 10^6 sec seems possible but fairly unlikely.

15 pages (revtex), 14 figures, large changes in analysis and conclusions

References in corpus (5)

• Astrophysical S-factor of the 3He(alpha,gamma)7Be reaction measured at low energy via prompt and delayed gamma detection
• Stau-catalyzed ${}^6$Li Production in Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis
• Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis with Long-Lived Charged Slepton
• Possible solution to the ${}^7$Li problem by the long lived stau
• Solving the cosmic lithium problems with primordial late-decaying particles

Cited by in corpus (22)

• Five-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Likelihoods and Parameters from the WMAP data
• Primordial Nucleosynthesis: from precision cosmology to fundamental physics
• Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis and Gravitino
• Dark Matter Candidates - Axions, Neutralinos, Gravitinos, and Axinos
• Strong Interactive Massive Particles from a Strong Coupled Theory
• The number density of a charged relic
• Gravitino Dark Matter and the Cosmic Lithium Abundances
• Measuring lifetimes of long-lived charged massive particles stopped in LHC detectors
• 6Li/7Li estimates for metal-poor stars
• New Constraints on Radiative Decay of Long-Lived Particles in Big Bang Nucleosynthesis with New ${}^4$He Photodisintegration Data
• Probing the Reheating Temperature at Colliders and with Primordial Nucleosynthesis
• The Gravitino-Stau Scenario after Catalyzed BBN
• Probing new physics with long-lived charged particles produced by atmospheric and astrophysical neutrinos
• Physics Beyond the Standard Model: Supersymmetry
• Flaxino dark matter and stau decay
• CBBN in the CMSSM
• Supersymmetric Dark Matter Candidates - The Lightest Neutralino, the Gravitino, and the Axino
• The long-lived stau as a thermal relic
• Overview of the lithium problem in metal-poor stars and new results on 6Li
• Detection of long-lived staus and gravitinos at the ILC
• Mass Determination of New Particle States
• Primordial heavy elements in composite dark matter models