Particle Dark Matter - A Theorist's Perspective

Dark matter is presumably made of some new, exotic particle that appears in extensions of the Standard Model. After giving a brief overview of some popular candidates, I discuss in more detail the most appealing case of the supersymmetric neutralino.Comment: Invited talk at PASCOS--03, Mumbai, Indi

Partial wave treatment of Supersymmetric Dark Matter in the presence of CP - violation

We present an improved partial wave analysis of the dominant LSP annihilation channel to a fermion-antifermion pair which avoids the non-relativistic expansion being therefore applicable near thresholds and poles. The method we develop allows of contributions of any partial wave in the total angular momentum J in contrast to partial wave analyses in terms of the orbital angular momentum L of the initial state, which is usually truncated to p-waves, and yields very accurate results. The method is formulated in such a way as to allow easy handling of CP-violating phases residing in supersymmetric parameters. We apply this refined partial wave technique in order to calculate the neutralino relic density in the constrained MSSM (CMSSM) in the presence of CP-violating terms occurring in the Higgs - mixing parameter \mu and trilinear A coupling for large tanb. The inclusion of CP-violating phases in mu and A does not upset significantly the picture and the annihilation of the LSP's to a b b_bar, through Higgs exchange, is still the dominant mechanism in obtaining cosmologically acceptable neutralino relic densities in regions far from the stau-coannihilation and the `focus point'. Significant changes can occur if we allow for phases in the gaugino masses and in particular the gluino mass.Comment: 23 pages LaTeX, 10 eps figures, version to appear in PR

Waves in Schwarzschild spacetimes: How strong can imprints of the spacetime curvature be

Misprints corrected, two references added. To appear in the Phys. Rev. D

Observable Electron EDM and Leptogenesis

In the context of the minimal supersymmetric seesaw model, the CP-violating neutrino Yukawa couplings might induce an electron EDM. The same interactions may also be responsible for the generation of the observed baryon asymmetry of the Universe via leptogenesis. We identify in a model-independent way those patterns within the seesaw models which predict an electron EDM at a level probed by planned laboratory experiments and show that negative searches on \tau-> e \gamma decay may provide the strongest upper bound on the electron EDM. We also conclude that a possible future detection of the electron EDM is incompatible with thermal leptogenesis, even when flavour effects are accounted for.Comment: 26 pages, 6 figure

Gravitino Dark Matter and Cosmological Constraints

The gravitino is a promising candidate for cold dark matter. We study cosmological constraints on scenarios in which the gravitino is the lightest supersymmetric particle and a charged slepton the next-to-lightest supersymmetric particle (NLSP). We obtain new results for the hadronic nucleosynthesis bounds by computing the 4-body decay of the NLSP slepton into the gravitino, the associated lepton, and a quark-antiquark pair. The bounds from the observed dark matter density are refined by taking into account gravitinos from both late NLSP decays and thermal scattering in the early Universe. We examine the present free-streaming velocity of gravitino dark matter and the limits from observations and simulations of cosmic structures. Assuming that the NLSP sleptons freeze out with a thermal abundance before their decay, we derive new bounds on the slepton and gravitino masses. The implications of the constraints for cosmology and collider phenomenology are discussed and the potential insights from future experiments are outlined. We propose a set of benchmark scenarios with gravitino dark matter and long-lived charged NLSP sleptons and describe prospects for the Large Hadron Collider and the International Linear Collider.Comment: 51 pages, 20 figures, revised version matches published version (results unchanged, JHEP style used, figures replaced with new high-quality figures, typos corrected, references added

The Gravitino-Stau Scenario after Catalyzed BBN

We consider the impact of Catalyzed Big Bang Nucleosynthesis on theories with a gravitino LSP and a charged slepton NLSP. In models where the gravitino to gaugino mass ratio is bounded from below, such as gaugino-mediated SUSY breaking, we derive a lower bound on the gaugino mass parameter m_1/2. As a concrete example, we determine the parameter space of gaugino mediation that is compatible with all cosmological constraints.Comment: 1+14 pages, 6 figures; v2: minor clarifications, 1 reference added, matches version to appear in JCA

Probing lepton flavour violation in slepton NLSP scenarios

In supersymmetric models where the gravitino is the lightest superparticle, the next-to-lightest superparticle (NLSP) is long-lived, and hence could be collected and studied in detail. We study the prospects of direct detection of lepton flavour violation in charged slepton NLSP decays. Mixing angles in the slepton sector as small as ~ 3\times 10^{-2} (9\times 10^{-3}) could be probed at the 90% confidence level if 3\times 10^3 (3\times 10^4) sleptons could be collected.Comment: 20 pages, 8 figures. v2:Comments and references are adde

On the thermal footsteps of Neutralino relic gases

Current literature suggests that neutralinos are the dominant cold dark matter particle species. Assuming the microcanonical definition of entropy, we examine the local entropy per particle produced between the ``freeze out'' era to the present. An ``entropy consistency'' criterion emerges by comparing this entropy with the entropy per particle of actual galactic structures given in terms of dynamical halo variables. We apply this criterion to the cases when neutralinos are mosly b-inos and mostly higgsinos, in conjunction with the usual ``abundance'' criterion requiring that present neutralino relic density complies with 0.1 < \Omega_{\chic{\tilde\chi^0_1}} < 0.3 for $h\simeq 0.65$. The joint application of both criteria reveals that a better fitting occurs for the b-ino channels, hence the latter seem to be favoured over the higgsino channels. The suggested methodology can be applied to test other annihilation channels of the neutralino, as well as other particle candidates of thermal gases relics.Comment: LaTex AIP style, 8 pages including 1 figure. Final version to appear in Proceedings of the Mexican School of Astrophysics (EMA), Guanajuato, M\'exico, July 31 - August 7, 200

Restudy on Dark Matter Time-Evolution in the Littlest Higgs model with T-parity

Following previous study, in the Littlest Higgs model (LHM), the heavy photon is supposed to be a possible dark matter candidate and its relic abundance of the heavy photon is estimated in terms of the Boltzman-Lee-Weinberg time-evolution equation. The effects of the T-parity violation is also considered. Our calculations show that when Higgs mass $M_H$ taken to be 300 GeV and don't consider T-parity violation, only two narrow ranges $133<M_{A_{H}}<135$ GeV and $167<M_{A_{H}}<169$ GeV are tolerable with the current astrophysical observation and if $135<M_{A_{H}}<167$ GeV, there must at least exist another species of heavy particle contributing to the cold dark matter. As long as the T-parity can be violated, the heavy photon can decay into regular standard model particles and would affect the dark matter abundance in the universe, we discuss the constraint on the T-parity violation parameter based on the present data. Direct detection prospects are also discussed in some detail.Comment: 13 pages, 11 figures include

Non-thermal Leptogenesis and a Prediction of Inflaton Mass in a Supersymmetric SO(10) Model

The gravitino problem gives a severe constraint on the thermal leptogenesis scenario. This problem leads us to consider some alternatives to it if we try to keep the gravitino mass around the weak scale $m_{3/2} \sim 100$ GeV. We consider, in this paper, the non-thermal leptogenesis scenario in the framework of a minimal supersymmetric SO(10) model. Even if we start with the same minimal SO(10) model, we have different predictions for low-energy phenomenologies dependent on the types of seesaw mechanism. This is the case for leptogenesis: it is shown that the type-I see-saw model gives a consistent scenario for the non-thermal leptogenesis but not for type-II. The predicted inflaton mass needed to produce the observed baryon asymmetry of the universe is found to be $M_I \sim 5 \times 10^{11}$ GeV for the reheating temperature $T_R = 10^6$ GeV.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures; the version to appear in JCA