2 research outputs found
Probing mSUGRA via the Extreme Universe Space Observatory
An analysis is carried out within mSUGRA of the estimated number of events
originating from upward moving ultra-high energy neutralinos that could be
detected by the Extreme Universe Space Observatory (EUSO). The analysis
exploits a recently proposed technique that differentiates ultra-high energy
neutralinos from ultra-high energy neutrinos using their different absorption
lengths in the Earth's crust. It is shown that for a significant part of the
parameter space, where the neutralino is mostly a Bino and with squark mass
TeV, EUSO could see ultra-high energy neutralino events with
essentially no background. In the energy range 10^9 GeV < E < 10^11 GeV, the
unprecedented aperture of EUSO makes the telescope sensitive to neutralino
fluxes as low as 1.1 \times 10^{-6} (E/GeV)^{-1.3} GeV^{-1} cm^{-2} yr^{-1}
sr^{-1}, at the 95% CL. Such a hard spectrum is characteristic of supermassive
particles' -body hadronic decay. The case in which the flux of ultra-high
energy neutralinos is produced via decay of metastable heavy particles with
uniform distribution throughout the universe is analyzed in detail. The
normalization of the ratio of the relics' density to their lifetime has been
fixed so that the baryon flux produced in the supermassive particle decays
contributes to about 1/3 of the events reported by the AGASA Collaboration
below 10^{11} GeV, and hence the associated GeV gamma-ray flux is in complete
agreement with EGRET data. For this particular case, EUSO will collect between
4 and 5 neutralino events (with 0.3 of background) in ~ 3 yr of running. NASA's
planned mission, the Orbiting Wide-angle Light-collectors (OWL), is also
briefly discussed in this context.Comment: Some discussion added, final version to be published in Physical
Review