Supernova Constraints on a Superlight Gravitino

Abstract

In supergravity models with low supersymmetry breaking scale the gravitinos can be superlight with mass in the micro-eV to keV range. In such a case, gravitino emission provides a new cooling mechanism for protoneutron stars and therefore can provide constraints on the mass of the superlight gravitino. This happens because the coupling to matter of superlight gravitinos is dominated by its goldstino component, whose coupling to matter is inversely proportional to the scale of supersymmetry breaking and increases as the gravitino mass decreases. Present observations therefore provide lower limits on the gravitino mass. Using recently revised goldstino couplings, we find that the two dominant processes in supernova cooling are $e^+e^-\to \tilde{G}\tilde{G}$ and $\gamma+e^-\to e^-\tilde{G}\tilde{G}$. They lead to lower limits on the supersymmetry breaking scale $\Lambda_{S}$ from 160 to 500 GeV for core temperatures 30 to 60 MeV and electron chemical potentials 200 to 300 MeV. The corresponding lower limits on the gravitino mass are $.6 - 6\times 10^{-6}$ eV.