New decay modes of gravitino dark matter

Abstract

We consider the three-body decays of gravitino dark matter in supersymmetric scenarios with bilinear R-parity violation. In particular, gravitino decays into lepton+W^* (lepton f\bar f') and \nu+Z^* (\nu f\bar f) are examined for gravitino masses below Mw. After computing the gravitino decay rates into these three-body final states and studying their dependence on supersymmetric parameters, we find that these new decay modes are often more important than the two-body decay, into a photon and a neutrino, considered in previous works. Consequently, the gravitino lifetime and its branching ratios are substantially modified, with important implications for the indirect detection of gravitino dark matter.