English

Constraining MeV to 10 GeV majoron by Big Bang Nucleosynthesis

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2024-07-02 v2 Nuclear Theory

Abstract

We estimate the Big Bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) constraint on the majoron in the mass range between 1MeV1\,{\rm MeV} to 10GeV10\,{\rm GeV} which dominantly decays into the standard model neutrinos. When the majoron lifetime is shorter than 1sec1\,{\rm sec}, the injected neutrinos mainly heat up background plasma, which alters the relation between photon temperature and background neutrino temperature. For a lifetime longer than 1sec1\,{\rm sec}, most of the injected neutrinos directly contribute to the protons-to-neutrons conversion. In both cases, deuterium and helium abundances are enhanced, while the constraint from the deuterium is stronger than that from the helium. 7Li^7{\rm Li} abundance gets decreased as a consequence of additional neutrons, but the parameter range that fits the observed 7Li^7{\rm Li} abundance is excluded by the deuterium constraint. We also estimate other cosmological constraints and compare them with the BBN bound.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2401.00687,
  title  = {Constraining MeV to 10 GeV majoron by Big Bang Nucleosynthesis},
  author = {Sanghyeon Chang and Sougata Ganguly and Tae Hyun Jung and Tae-Sun Park and Chang Sub Shin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2401.00687},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

12 pages, 3 figures, v2: major revision made by including correct n/p conversion induced by modified thermal neutrinos, slight changes in the result, references added, version accepted in PRD