Paper detail

Primordial He' abundance implied by the mirror dark matter interpretation of the DAMA/Libra signal

We compute the primordial mirror helium He' mass fraction emerging from Big Bang nucleosynthesis in the mirror sector of particles in the presence of kinetic mixing between photons and mirror photons. We explore the kinetic mixing parameter (epsilon) values relevant for cosmology and which are also currently probed by the dark matter direct detection experiments. In particular, we find that for epsilon \sim 10^{-9}, as suggested by the DAMA/Libra and other experiments, a large He' mass fraction (Y_{He'} \approx 90%) is produced. Such a large value of the primordial He' mass fraction will have important implications for the mirror dark matter interpretation of the direct detection experiments, as well as for the study of mirror star formation and evolution.