Radiative Decay of a Long-Lived Particle and Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis
Loading...
Date
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
Description
The effects of radiatively decaying, long-lived particles on big-bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) are discussed. If high-energy photons are emitted after BBN, they may change the abundances of the light elements through photodissociation processes, which may result in a significant discrepancy between the BBN theory and observation. We calculate the abundances of the light elements, including the effects of photodissociation induced by a radiatively decaying particle, but neglecting the hadronic branching ratio. Using these calculated abundances, we derive a constraint on such particles by comparing our theoretical results with observations. Taking into account the recent controversies regarding the observations of the light-element abundances, we derive constraints for various combinations of the measurements. We also discuss several models which predict such radiatively decaying particles, and we derive constraints on such models.
Published version in Phys. Rev. D. Typos in figure captions corrected
Published version in Phys. Rev. D. Typos in figure captions corrected