Physics – High Energy Physics – High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
Scientific paper
2010-06-21
Phys.Rev.D82:103514,2010
Physics
High Energy Physics
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
50 pages, 13 figures; references added, typo corrected
Scientific paper
10.1103/PhysRevD.82.103514
The persistent discrepancy between observations of 7Li with putative primordial origin and its abundance prediction in Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) has become a challenge for the standard cosmological and astrophysical picture. We point out that the decay of GeV-scale metastable particles X may significantly reduce the BBN value down to a level at which it is reconciled with observations. The most efficient reduction occurs when the decay happens to charged pions and kaons, followed by their charge exchange reactions with protons. Similarly, if X decays to muons, secondary electron antineutrinos produce a similar effect. We consider the viability of these mechanisms in different classes of new GeV-scale sectors, and find that several minimal extensions of the Standard Model with metastable vector and/or scalar particles are capable of solving the cosmological lithium problem. Such light states can be a key to the explanation of recent cosmic ray anomalies and can be searched for in a variety of high-intensity medium-energy experiments.
Pospelov Maxim
Pradler Josef
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