Modified big bang nucleosynthesis with nonstandard neutron sources

During big bang nucleosynthesis, any injection of extra neutrons around the time of the ⁷Be formation, i.e. at a temperature of order T50 keV, can reduce the predicted freeze-out amount of ⁷Be+⁷Li that otherwise remains in sharp contradiction with the Spite plateau value inferred from the observations of Pop II stars. However, the growing confidence in the primordial D/H determinations puts a strong constraint on any such scenario. We address this issue in detail, analyzing different temporal patterns of neutron injection, such as decay, annihilation, resonant annihilation, and oscillation between mirror and standard model world neutrons. For this latter case, we derive the realistic injection pattern taking into account thermal effects (damping and refraction) in the primordial plasma. If the extra-neutron supply is the sole nonstandard mechanism operating during the big bang nucleosynthesis, the suppression of lithium abundance below Li/H≤1.9×10^-10 always leads to the overproduction of deuterium, D/H≥3.6×10^-5, well outside the error bars suggested by recent observations.