2002/02/15 by Shaaban Khalil, S. Khalil, C. Munoz +3 · 4 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1367-2630/4/1/327
published as NewJ.Phys.4:27,2002 · Latex, 11 pages, 2 figures
arxiv created 2002/02/15 · openalex publication_date 2002/04/30 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
We analyse the relic neutralino density in supersymmetric models with an intermediate unification scale. In particular, we present concrete cosmological scenarios where the reheating temperature is as small as (1-1000 MeV). When this temperature is associated to the decay of moduli fields producing neutralinos, we show that the relic abundance increases considerably with respect to the standard thermal production. Thus the neutralino becomes a good dark matter candidate with 0.1 ≲ Ω h 2 ≲ 0.3, even for regions of the parameter space where large neutralino-nucleon cross sections, compatible with current dark matter experiments, are present. This is obtained for intermediate scales M I ~ 10 11 -10 14 GeV, and moduli masses m ϕ ~ 100-1000 GeV. On the other hand, when the above temperature is associated with the decay of an inflaton field, the relic abundance is too small.