Possible astrophysical signatures of heavy stable neutral relics in supergravity models

2001/11/23 by Rouzbeh Allahverdi, Kari Enqvist, Anupam Mazumdar
Physics and Astronomy · #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #astro-ph #gr-qc #hep-ph #hep-th

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.65.103519

published as Phys.Rev.D65:103519,2002 · 12 pages

arxiv created 2001/11/23 · openalex publication_date 2002/05/14 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

We consider heavy stable neutral particles in the context of supergravity and show that a gravitationally suppressed inflaton decay can produce such particles in cosmologically interesting abundances within a wide mass range 10³ GeV<~m_X<~10¹¹ GeV. In gravity-mediated supersymmetry breaking models, a heavy particle can decay into its superpartner and a photon-photino pair or a gravitino. Such decays only change the identity of a possible dark matter candidate. However, for 10³ GeV<~m_X<~10⁷ GeV, astrophysical bounds from a gamma-ray background and photodissociation of light elements can be more stringent than the overclosure bound, thus ruling out the particle as a dark matter candidate.

Citations

• On the thermal regeneration rate for light gravitinos in the early Universe
• Production of Spin3/2Particles from Vacuum Fluctuations