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.