Neutralinos and Big Bang Nucleosynthesis

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Abstract
The synthesis of Li6 during the epoch of Big Bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) due to residual annihilation of dark matter neutralinos is considered. By comparing the predicted Li6 to observations of this isotope in low-metallicity stars, constraints on s-wave neutralino annihilation rates into quarks, gauge bosons, and Higgs bosons may be derived. It may be shown that, for example, wino dark matter in anomaly-mediated SUSY breaking scenarios with masses M < 250 GeV or light neutralinos with M < 20 GeV annihilating into light quarks are, taken face value, ruled out. In general, scenarios invoking non-thermally generated neutralinos with enhanced annihilation rates for a putative explanation of cosmic ray positron or galactic center as well as diffuse background gamma-ray signals by present-day neutralino annihilation will have to face a stringent Li6 overproduction problem. On the other hand, it is possible that Li6 as observed in low-metallicity stars is entirely due to residual neutralino annihilation during BBN, even for neutralinos undergoing a standard thermal freeze-out.

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