Published December 1, 2011 | Version Published + Submitted
Journal Article Open

Gravitino freeze-in

Abstract

We explore an alternative mechanism for the production of gravitino dark matter whereby relic gravitinos originate from the decays of superpartners which are still in thermal equilibrium, i.e. via freeze-in. Contributions to the gravitino abundance from freeze-in can easily dominate over those from thermal scattering over a broad range of parameter space, e.g., when the scalar superpartners are heavy. Because the relic abundance from freeze-in is independent of the reheating temperature after inflation, collider measurements may be used to unambiguously reconstruct the freeze-in origin of gravitinos. In particular, if gravitino freeze-in indeed accounts for the present day dark matter abundance, then the lifetime of the next-to-lightest superpartner is uniquely fixed by the superpartner spectrum.

Additional Information

© 2011 American Physical Society. (Received 28 June 2011; published 28 December 2011) We would like to thank Piyush Kumar for collaboration during the early stages of this work. This work was supported in part by the Director, Office of Science, Office of High Energy and Nuclear Physics, of the US Department of Energy under Contract DE-AC02-05CH11231 and by the National Science Foundation on grant PHY-0457315.

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Published - PhysRevD.84.115021.pdf

Submitted - 1103.4394.pdf

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Additional details

Identifiers

Eprint ID
96532
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20190619-094158259

Related works

Funding

Department of Energy (DOE)
DE-AC02-05CH11231
NSF
PHY-0457315

Dates

Created
2019-06-19
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Updated
2021-11-16
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