Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis Reactions Catalyzed by a Long-Lived Negatively Charged Leptonic Particle

An accurate quantum three-body calculation is performed for the new type of big-bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) reactions that, are catalyzed by a hypothetical long-lived negatively charged, massive leptonic particle (called X-) such as the supersymmetric (SUSY) particle stau, the scalar partner of the tau lepton. It is known that if the X- particle has a, lifetime tau(X) greater than or similar to 10(3) s, it can capture a light element previously synthesized in standard BBN and form a Coulombic bound state, for example, ((BeX-)-Be-7) at temperature T-9 less than or similar to 0.4 (in units of 10(9) K), (alpha X-) at T-9 less than or similar to 0.1 and (pX(-)) at T-9 less than or similar to 0.01. The bound state, an exotic atom, is expected to induce the following reactions in which X- acts as a catalyst: i) alpha-transfer reactions such as (alpha X-) + d -> Li-6 + X, ii) radiative capture reactions such as ((BeX-)-Be-7) + p -> ((BX-)-B-8) + gamma, iii) three-body breakup reactions such as ((LiX-)-Li-7) + p -> alpha + alpha + X-, iv) charge-exchange reactions such as (pX(-)) + alpha -> (alpha X-) + p and v) neutron induced reactions such as ((BeX-)-Be-8) + n -> Be-9 + X-. In recent, papers it has been claimed that some of these X--catalyzed reactions have significantly large cross sections so that the inclusion of the reactions into the BBN network calculation can markedly change the abundances of some elements, giving not only a solution to the Li-6-Li-7 problem (the calculated underproduction of Li-6 by a factor of similar to 1000 and overproduction of Li-7+Be-7 by a factor of similar to 3) but also a constraint on the lifetime and primordial abundance of the elementary particle X-. However, most of these calculations of the reaction cross sections in the literature were performed assuming too naive models or approximations that are unsuitable for these complicated low-energy nuclear reactions. We use a high-accuracy few-body calculation method developed by the authors and provide precise cross sections and rates of these catalyzed BBN reactions for use in the BBN network calculation.