Neutralino Dark Matter in a Class of Unified Theories

Abstract

The cosmological significance of the neutralino sector is studied for a class of models in which electroweak symmetry breaking is seeded by a gauge singlet. Extensive use is made of the renormalisation group equations to significantly reduce the parameter space, by deriving analytic expressions for all the supersymmetry-breaking couplings in terms of the universal gaugino mass $m_{1/2}$, the universal scalar mass $m_0$ and the coupling $A$. The composition of the LSP is determined exactly below the W mass, no approximations are made for sfermion masses, and all particle exchanges are considered in calculating the annihilation cross-section; the relic abundance is then obtained by an analytic approximation. We find that in these models, stable neutralinos may make a significant contribution to the dark matter in the universe.