Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis Reactions Catalyzed by a Long-Lived Negatively Charged Leptonic Particle

Abstract

An accurate quantum three-body calculation is performed for the new type of big-bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) reactions that are catalyzed by a long-lived negatively-charged, massive leptonic particle (called X^-) such as the supersymmetric (SUSY) particle stau. The reactions studied here includes, i) 4He-transfer reactions such as (4He X)+d --> 6Li+X, ii) radiative capture reactions such as (7Be X)+ p --> (8B X) + gamma, iii) three-body breakup reactions such as (7Li X)+ p --> 4He+4He+X, iv) charge-exchange reactions such as (p X)+4He -->(4He X) +p, and v) neutron induced reactions such as (8Be X)+ n -->9Be+X, where (A X) denotes a Coulombic bound state of a nucleus A and X^-. In recent papers it has been claimed that some of the catalyzed BBN reactions have significantly large cross sections so as to markedly change the abundances of some elements, not only giving a solution to the 6Li-7Li problem (calculated underproduction of 6Li by a factor of 1000 and overproduction of 7Li+7Be by a factor of nearly 3) but also imposing strong restrictions on the lifetime and the primordial abundance of X^-. However, most of the calculations of these reaction cross sections in the literature were performed assuming too naive models or approximations that are unsuitable for the complicated low-energy nuclear reactions. We use a high-accuracy few-body calculational method developed by the authors, and provide precise cross sections and rates of these catalyzed BBN reactions for use in the BBN network calculation.

40 pages, 11 figures; v3: matches published version, minor grammatical changes, references renumbered

References in corpus (1)

• Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Three Year Results: Implications for Cosmology

Cited by in corpus (14)

• The Primordial Lithium Problem
• Big Bang Nucleosynthesis as a Probe of New Physics
• Gravitino Dark Matter and the Cosmic Lithium Abundances
• Measuring lifetimes of long-lived charged massive particles stopped in LHC detectors
• Effect of Long-lived Strongly Interacting Relic Particles on Big Bang Nucleosynthesis
• Cosmological solutions to the Lithium problem: Big-bang nucleosynthesis with photon cooling, $X$-particle decay and a primordial magnetic field
• Destruction of 7Be in big bang nucleosynthesis via long-lived sub-strongly interacting massive particles as a solution to the Li problem
• Review on Effects of Long-lived Negatively Charged Massive Particles on Big Bang Nucleosynthesis
• Solution to Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis in Hybrid Axion Dark Matter Model
• Gravitino dark matter and the lithium primordial abundance within a pre-BBN modified expansion
• Comprehensive study of muon-catalyzed nuclear reaction processes in the $dt\mu$ molecule
• The long-lived stau as a thermal relic
• LHC signature with long-lived stau in high reheating temperature scenario
• Big-bang nucleosynthesis with a long-lived CHAMP including He4 spallation process