The cross sections of nuclear reactions between the radioisotope 7Be and deuterium, a possible mechanism of reducing the production of mass-7 nuclides in Big-Bang nucleosynthesis, were measured at center-of-mass energies between 0.2 MeV and 1.5 MeV. The measured cross sections are dominated by the (d,α) reaction channel, towards which prior experiments were mostly insensitive. A new resonance at 0.36(5)~MeV with a strength of ωγ = 1.7(5)~keV was observed inside the relevant Gamow window. Calculations of nucleosynthesis outcomes based on the experimental cross section show that the resonance reduces the predicted abundance of primordial 7Li, but not sufficiently to solve the primordial lithium problem.
@article{arxiv.1808.07893,
title = {Measurement of $d + ^7$Be cross sections for Big-Bang nucleosynthesis},
author = {N. Rijal and I. Wiedenhöver and J. C. Blackmon and M. Anastasiou and L. T. Baby and D. D. Caussyn and P. Höflich and K. W. Kemper and E. Koshchiy and G. V. Rogachev},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1808.07893},
year = {2019}
}