Nonthermal Cosmic Rays during Big Bang Nucleosynthesis to Solve the Lithium Problem

Abstract

The discrepancy between the theoretical prediction of primordial lithium abundances and astronomical observations is called the Lithium Problem. We find that extra contributions from non-thermal hydrogen and helium during Big Bang nucleosynthesis can explain the discrepancy, for both Li-7 and Li-6, and will change the deuterium abundance only little. The allowed parameter space of such an amount of non-thermal particles and the energy range is shown. The hypothesis is stable regardless of the cross-section uncertainty of relevant reactions and the explicit shape of the energy spectrum.