Relic Neutralino Density in Scenarios with Intermediate Unification Scale

Abstract

We analyse the relic neutralino density in supersymmetric models with an intermediate unification scale. In particular, we present concrete cosmological scenarios where the reheating temperature is as small as $\cal{O}$ $1 - 1000$ MeV). When this temperature is associated to the decay of moduli fields producing neutralinos, we show that the relic abundance increases considerably with respect to the standard thermal production. Thus the neutralino becomes a good dark matter candidate with $0.1\lsim \Omega h^2 \lsim 0.3$, even for regions of the parameter space where large neutralino-nucleon cross sections, compatible with current dark matter experiments, are present. This is obtained for intermediate scales $M_I\sim 10^{11}-10^{14}$ GeV, and moduli masses $m_\phi\sim 100-1000$ GeV. On the other hand, when the above temperature is associated to the decay of an inflaton field, the relic abundance is too small.