Resonance Excitations in 7Be(d,p)8Be* to Address the Cosmological Lithium Problem

The anomaly in lithium abundance is a well-known unresolved problem in nuclear astrophysics. A recent revisit to the problem tried the avenue of resonance enhancement to account for the primordial 7Li abundance in standard big-bang nucleosynthesis. Prior measurements of the 7Be(d,p)8Be∗ reaction could not account for the individual contributions of the different excited states involved, particularly at higher energies close to the Q value of the reaction. We carried out an experiment at HIE-ISOLDE, CERN to study this reaction at Ec.m.=7.8 MeV, populating excitations up to 22 MeV in 8Be for the first time. The angular distributions of the several excited states have been measured and the con…