Particle physics catalysis of thermal Big Bang Nucleosynthesis

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Abstract
We point out that the existence of metastable, tau > 10^3 s, negatively charged electroweak-scale particles (X^-) alters the predictions for lithium and other primordial elemental abundances for A>4 via the formation of bound states with nuclei during BBN. In particular, we show that the bound states of X^- with helium, formed at temperatures of about T=10^8K, lead to the catalytic enhancement of Li6 production, which is eight orders of magnitude more efficient than the standard channel. Consequently, we derive an upper bound on the number density of long-lived X^- particles (tau > 10^5 s) relative to entropy of n_{X^-}/s < 10^{-17}, which is one of the most stringent probes of electroweak scale remnants known to date, and is independent of the details of X^- decay.

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