Neutralino Dark Matter from Heavy Gravitino Decay

Abstract

We propose a new scenario of non-thermal production of neutralino cold dark matter, in which the overproduction problem of lightest supersymmetric particles (LSPs) in the standard thermal history is naturally solved. The mechanism requires a heavy modulus field which decays mainly to ordinary particles releasing large entropy to dilute gravitinos produced just after inflation and thermal relics of LSPs. Significant amount of gravitinos are also pair-produced at the decay, which subsequently decay into the neutralinos. We identify the regions of the parameter space in which the requisite abundance of the neutralino dark matter is obtained without spoiling the big-bang nucleosynthesis by injection of hadronic showers from gravitino decay. The neutralino abundance obtained in this mechanism is insensitive to the details of the superparticle mass spectrum, unlike the standard thermal abundance. We also briefly mention the testability of the scenario in future experiments.