Supersymmetry, Finite Temperature and Gravitino Production in the Early Universe

Abstract

We reconsider post-inflation gravitino production, in the context of hidden sector supergravity models. We discuss the possible role of supersymmetry breaking from finite temperature effects in enhancing the rate for gravitino production and argue that there is no such enhancement. Our conclusion is based on a simple decoupling argument, which is independent of temperature. We also characterize the properties of goldstino-like hydrodynamic fluctuations that arise in supersymmetric models at finite temperature. We show that they cannot lead to enhanced gravitino emission via infrared divergences. We comment on an analogy with axion emission from hadronic matter.