POSSIBILITY OF A SIGNATURE OF THE RADIATIVE DECAY OF RELIC PARTICLES ON LIGHT ELEMENT ABUNDANCES

Abstract

Recent spectroscopic observations of metal poor stars have indicated that both 7 Li and 6 Li have abundance plateaus as a function of the metallicity. Abundances of 7 Li are about a factor three lower than the primordial abundance predicted by standard big-bang nucleosynthesis (SBBN), and 6 Li abundances are ~ 1/20 of 7 Li , whereas SBBN predicts negligible amounts of 6 Li compared to the detected level. These discrepancies suggest that 6 Li has another cosmological or Galactic origin. Furthermore, it appear that 7 Li (and also 6 Li ) has been depleted from its primordial abundance by some post-BBN processes. We study the possibility that the radiative decay of long-lived particles has affected the cosmological lithium abundances in reality. We calculate the non-thermal nucleosynthesis associated with the radiative decay, and explore the allowed region of the parameters specifying the properties of long-lived particles. We also impose constraints from observations of the CMB energy spectrum. It is found that non-thermal nucleosynthesis could produces 6 Li at the level detected in metal poor halo stars (MPHSs), when the lifetime of the unstable particles is of the order ~ 108 − 1012 s depending on their initial abundance. We conclude that a combination of two different processes could explain the lithium isotopic abundances in MPHSs. First, a non-thermal cosmological nucleosynthesis associated with the radiative decay of unstable particles; and second, about the same degree of stellar depletion of both primordial lithium isotopic abundances. If MPHSs experience 6 Li depletion of factor much greater than ~ 3, the simple radiative decay process can not be the cause of large 6 Li abundances in MPHSs.