Production of ²H, ³He, and ⁷Li from interactions between jets and clouds

The interactions between jets of high-energy nuclei and nuclei of the surrounding medium are studied. Such interactions could be initiated by jets from active galactic nuclei interacting with surrounding cool clouds. The resulting nuclear interactions are found to produce copious amounts of ²H and ³He from the ⁴He nuclei. These results suggest that jets of particles from quasars could have produced anomalously high abundances in surrounding clouds of some of the nuclides usually thought to characterize big bang nucleosynthesis, specifically, the ²H seen in absorption spectra.