The impact of strongly interacting relics on big bang nucleosynthesis

We study the impact of long lived strongly interacting particles on primordial nuclear abundances. Particularly we look at the case of anti-squark quark bound states called mesinos. These mesinos are similar to massive nucleons in that they have the same spin and isospin. Like nucleons, the mesin...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Sharman, Jonathan William
Other Authors: Pospelov, Maxim
Format: Others
Language:English
en
Published: 2010
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1828/3168
Description
Summary:We study the impact of long lived strongly interacting particles on primordial nuclear abundances. Particularly we look at the case of anti-squark quark bound states called mesinos. These mesinos are similar to massive nucleons in that they have the same spin and isospin. Like nucleons, the mesinos take part in nucleosynthesis and are bound into nuclei. We incorporate the mesinos into the various stages of BBN, from the QCD phase transition, to their capture of nucleons, to their eventual decay. We identify the mechanisms by which the mesinos could impact primordial abundances and show which actually do so. We nd that for the predicted mesino abundance, only one mechanism exists that has the potential of generating an observable signature.