THE ORTHOPOSITRONIUM DECAY PUZZLE AND PRIMORDIAL NUCLEOSYNTHESIS
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
2009-10-28 v1 Astrophysics
Abstract
The discrepancy between the experimental decay rate of orthopositronium (o-Ps) and the QED theoretical prediction can be solved by invoking decays of o-Ps into exotic particles with branching ratios of the order of 10^{-3}. We show that considerations based on primordial nucleosynthesis and effective Lagrangians place a very stringent upper bound: B = Gamma(o-Ps -> ``exotic'' + ...)/Gamma(o-Ps) <= 2 x 10^{-15}, ruling out the exotic decay solution to the puzzle.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.hep-ph/9505443,
title = {THE ORTHOPOSITRONIUM DECAY PUZZLE AND PRIMORDIAL NUCLEOSYNTHESIS},
author = {R. Escribano and E. Masso and R. Toldra},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-ph/9505443},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
11 pages, LaTeX file, 1 figure in a compressed uuencoded additional file. Full postscript file available at ftp://ftp.ifae.es/preprint/ft/uabft366.ps