Primordial beryllium as a big bang calorimeter
  Many models of new physics including variants of supersymmetry predict
metastable long-lived particles that can decay during or after primordial
nucleosynthesis, releasing significant amounts of non-thermal energy. The
hadronic energy injection in these decays leads to the formation of ^9Be via
the chain of non-equilibrium transformations: Energy_h -> T, ^3He -> ^6He, ^6Li
-> ^9Be. We calculate the efficiency of this transformation and show that if
the injection happens at cosmic times of a few hours, the release of 10 MeV per
baryon can be sufficient for obtaining a sizable ^9Be abundance. The absence of
a plateau-structure in the ^9Be/H abundance down to a 10^{-14} level allows one
to use beryllium as a robust constraint on new physics models with decaying or
annihilating particles.
