2 research outputs found
Bound-State Effects on Light-Element Abundances in Gravitino Dark Matter Scenarios
If the gravitino is the lightest supersymmetric particle and the long-lived
next-to-lightest sparticle (NSP) is the stau, the charged partner of the tau
lepton, it may be metastable and form bound states with several nuclei. These
bound states may affect the cosmological abundances of Li6 and Li7 by enhancing
nuclear rates that would otherwise be strongly suppressed. We consider the
effects of these enhanced rates on the final abundances produced in Big-Bang
nucleosynthesis (BBN), including injections of both electromagnetic and
hadronic energy during and after BBN. We calculate the dominant two- and
three-body decays of both neutralino and stau NSPs, and model the
electromagnetic and hadronic decay products using the PYTHIA event generator
and a cascade equation. Generically, the introduction of bound states drives
light element abundances further from their observed values; however, for small
regions of parameter space bound state effects can bring lithium abundances in
particular in better accord with observations. We show that in regions where
the stau is the NSP with a lifetime longer than 10^3-10^4 s, the abundances of
Li6 and Li7 are far in excess of those allowed by observations. For shorter
lifetimes of order 1000 s, we comment on the possibility in minimal
supersymmetric and supergravity models that stau decays could reduce the Li7
abundance from standard BBN values while at the same time enhancing the Li6
abundance.Comment: 22 pages 6 figure
Dark Matter from Gaugino Mediation.
We study dark matter for gaugino-mediated supersymmetry breaking and compact
dimensions of order the grand unification scale. Higgs fields are bulk fields,
and in general their masses differ from those of squarks and sleptons at the
unification scale. As a consequence, at different points in parameter space,
the gravitino, a neutralino or a scalar lepton can be the lightest (LSP) or
next-to-lightest (NLSP) superparticle. We investigate the constraints from
primordial nucleosynthesis on the different scenarios. While neutralino and
gravitino dark matter with a sneutrino NLSP are consistent for a wide range of
parameters, gravitino dark matter with a stau NLSP is strongly constrained.Comment: 18 pages, updated to published version (minor modifications,
reference added