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 [1009.3932] Time of primordial Be-7 conversion into Li-7, energy release and doublet of narrow cosmological neutrino lines
 Authors: Rishi Khatri, Rashid A. Sunyaev Abstract: One of the important light elements created during the big bang nucleosynthesis is Be-7 which then decays to Li-7 by electron capture when recombination becomes effective but well before the Saha equilibrium recombination is reached. This means that Be-7 should wait until its recombination epoch even though the half-life of the hydrogenic beryllium atom is only 106.4 days. We calculate when the conversion from primordial Be-7 to Li-7 occurs taking into account the population of the hyperfine structure sublevels and solving the kinetic equations for recombination, photoionization and conversion rate. We also calculate the energies and the spectrum of narrow neutrino doublet lines resulting from Be-7 decay. [PDF] [PS] [BibTex] [Bookmark]

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Neal Dalal

Joined: 25 Sep 2004
Posts: 7
Affiliation: CITA

 Posted: September 23 2010 This is a neat result! This paper is about the final stage of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN). We normally think of BBN as occurring at extremely high redshift, e.g. $z\approx 10^8$. Here they discuss a BBN process that occurs much later, at redshifts closer to 104 or 105. Most of the 7Li produced during BBN arises from the decay of 7Be, through electron capture. The authors point out that this decay of 7Be occurs much later than naively expected, because the electron capture rate is too low when Be atoms are fully ionized. Only at 100 eV temperatures are there sufficient numbers of bound electrons that 7Be can decay to 7Li. It's unclear if this effect has any observable consequences, just because the number of 7Be nuclei is so low. Still, at least for non-experts like me, it's surprising that nucleosynthetic processes can operate at such low temperatures.
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