Limits from BBN on Light Electromagnetic Decays

TL;DR

This paper refines constraints on low-energy electromagnetic decays in the early universe by analyzing electromagnetic cascades and their impact on primordial element abundances, extending previous BBN-based limits to energies between 1-100 MeV.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed calculation of electromagnetic cascades for energies below 100 MeV, showing deviations from universal spectra and assessing their impact on BBN constraints.

Findings

Electromagnetic cascades at 1-100 MeV differ from universal spectra.

Photon final state radiation significantly affects BBN-relevant spectra.

BBN constraints on light electromagnetic decays are tightened for energies below 100 MeV.

Abstract

Injection of electromagnetic energy - photons, electrons, or positrons - into the plasma of the early universe can destroy light elements created by primordial Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN). The success of BBN at predicting primordial abundances has thus been used to impose stringent constraints on decay or annihilation processes with primary energies near or above the electroweak scale. In this work we investigate the constraints from BBN on electromagnetic decays that inject lower energies, between 1-100 MeV. We compute the electromagnetic cascade from such injections and we show that it can deviate significantly from the universal spectrum commonly used in BBN calculations. For electron injection below 100 MeV, we find that the final state radiation of photons can have a significant impact on the resulting spectrum relevant for BBN. We also apply our results on electromagnetic cascades to investigate the limits from BBN on light electromagnetic decays prior to recombination, and we compare them to other bounds on such decays.