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Cosmic rays during BBN as origin of Lithium problem

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Published 10 May 2012 Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd
, , Citation Ming-ming Kang et al JCAP05(2012)011 DOI 10.1088/1475-7516/2012/05/011

1475-7516/2012/05/011

Abstract

There may be non-thermal cosmic rays during big-bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) epoch (dubbed as BBNCRs). This paper investigated whether such BBNCRs can be the origin of Lithium problem or not. It can be expected that BBNCRs flux will be small in order to keep the success of standard BBN (SBBN). With favorable assumptions on the BBNCR spectrum between 0.09–4 MeV, our numerical calculation showed that extra contributions from BBNCRs can account for the 7Li abundance successfully. However 6Li abundance is only lifted an order of magnitude, which is still much lower than the observed value. As the deuteron abundance is very sensitive to the spectrum choice of BBNCRs, the allowed parameter space for the spectrum is strictly constrained. We should emphasize that the acceleration mechanism for BBNCRs in the early universe is still an open question. For example, strong turbulent magnetic field is probably the solution to the problem. Whether such a mechanism can provide the required spectrum deserves further studies.

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10.1088/1475-7516/2012/05/011