We investigate scenarios in which a charged, long-lived scalar particle decouples from the primordial plasma in the Early Universe. We compute the number density at time of freeze-out considering both the cases of abelian and non-abelian interactions and including the effect of Sommerfeld enhancement at low initial velocity. We also discuss as extreme case the maximal cross section that fulfils the unitarity bound. We then compare these number densities to the exotic nuclei searches for stable relics and to the BBN bounds on unstable relics and draw conclusions for the cases of a stau or stop NLSP in supersymmetric models with a gravitino or axino LSP.
The catalysis of nuclear reactions by negatively charged relics leads to increased outputs of primordial ^6Li and ^9Be. In combination with observational constraints on the primordial fractions of ^6Li and ^9Be, this imposes strong restrictions on the primordial abundance and the lifetime of charged relics. We analyze the constraints from the catalysis of ^9Be on supersymmetric models in which the gravitino is the lightest supersymmetric particle and a charged slepton--such as the lighter stau--the next-to-lightest supersymmetric particle (NLSP). Barring the special cases in which the primordi…
We investigate the thermal relic density of the cold dark matter in the context of the brane world cosmology. Since the expansion law in a high energy regime is modified from the one in the standard cosmology, if the dark matter decouples in such a high energy regime its relic number density is affected by this modified expansion law. We derive analytic formulas for the number density of the dark matter. It is found that the resultant relic density is characterized by the ``transition temperature'' at which the modified expansion law in the brane world cosmology is connecting with the standard…
We evaluate the relic density of neutralinos in the minimal supergravity (mSUGRA) model. All 2-->2 neutralino annihilation diagrams, as well as all processes involving sleptons, charginos, neutralinos and third generation squarks are included. Relativistic thermal averaging of the velocity times cross sections is performed. We find that co-annihilation effects are only important on the edges of the model parameter space, where some amount of fine-tuning is necessary to obtain a reasonable relic density. Alternatively, at high tan(beta), annihilation through very broad Higgs resonances gives ri…
We discuss the relic abundance of massive long lived colored particles with mass of the order of 1 TeV. We first examine the case where the massive colored particles have the standard color only. Next we consider the "Quirk Model" suggested by M. Luty, in which the colored particles transform under an additional non-abelian gauge group with a scale much smaller than the particles' mass. In both cases, the relic abundance is reduced via a "late" hadronic annihilation stage. In the second case the relic Quirks bind to ordinary quarks forming fractional charged objects and also anomalous heavy is…
The sensitivity of the lightest supersymmetric particle relic density calculation to the variation of the cosmological expansion rate before nucleosynthesis is discussed. We show that such a modification, even extremely modest and with no consequence on the cosmological observations, can greatly enhance the calculated relic density, and therefore change the constraints on the SUSY parameter space drastically. We illustrate this variation in two examples of SUSY models, and show that it is unsafe to use the lower bound of the WMAP limits in order to constrain supersymmetry. We therefore suggest…
We compare results of four public supersymmetric (SUSY) spectrum codes, Isajet, Softsusy, Spheno and Suspect to estimate the present-day uncertainty in the calculation of the relic density of dark matter in mSUGRA models. We find that even for mass differences of about 1% the spread in the obtained relic densities can be 10%. In difficult regions of the parameter space, such as large tan(beta) or large m_0, discrepancies in the relic density are much larger. We also find important differences in the stau co-annihilation region. We show the impact of these uncertainties on the bounds from WMAP …
We revisit the calculation of the relic density of the lightest Kaluza-Klein particle (LKP) in the model of Universal Extra Dimensions. The Kaluza-Klein (KK) particle spectrum at level one is rather degenerate, and various coannihilation processes may be relevant. We extend the calculation of hep-ph/0206071 to include coannihilation processes with all level one KK particles. In our computation we consider a most general KK particle spectrum, without any simplifying assumptions. In particular, we do not assume a completely degenerate KK spectrum and instead retain the dependence on each individ…
We present the results of relic density calculations for cold dark matter candidates coming from a model of dark energy and dark matter, which is described by an asymptotically free gauge group SU(2)_Z (QZD) with a coupling constant alpha_Z ~ 1 at very low scale of Lambda_Z ~ 10^(-3) eV while alpha_Z ~ weak coupling at high energies. The dark matter candidates of QZD are two fermions in the form of weakly interacting massive particles. Our results show that for masses between 50 and 285 GeV, they can account for either a considerable fraction or the entire dark matter of the Universe.
We compute the neutralino relic density in the minimal supersymmetric standard model by using exact expressions for the neutralino annihilation cross section into all tree-level final states, including all contributions and interference terms. We find that several final states may give comparable contributions to the relic density, which illustrates the importance of performing a complete calculation. We compare the exact results with those of the usual expansion method and demonstrate a sizeable discrepancy (of more than 10%) over a significant range of the neutralino mass of up to several te…
The thermal relic abundance of species critically depends on the assumed underlying cosmological model. In the case of neutralinos, freeze-out takes place long before Big Bang Nucleosynthesis, which provides the strongest constraint on the evolution of the Hubble parameter in the Early Universe. We show that non-standard cosmologies, such as models featuring a quintessential scalar field or primordial anisotropies, can lead to large enhancements in the neutralino relic abundance, up to six orders of magnitudes. Within these scenarios, supersymmetric models with large neutralino annihilation cr…
We calculate the relic density of dark matter in the MSSM with CP violation. We analyse various scenarios of neutralino annihilation: the cases of a bino, bino-wino and bino-Higgsino LSP, annihilation through Higgs, as well as sfermion coannihilation scenarios. Large phase effects are found, on the one hand due to shifts in the masses, on the other hand due to modifications of the couplings. Taking special care to disentangle the effects in masses and couplings, we demonstrate that the presence of CP phases can have a significant influence on the neutralino relic abundance. Typical variations …
We investigate the relic density n_χof non-relativistic long-lived or stable particles χin cosmological scenarios in which the temperature T is too low for χto achieve full chemical equilibrium. The case with a heavier particle decaying into χis also investigated. We derive approximate solutions for n_χ(T) which accurately reproduce numerical results when full thermal equilibrium is not achieved. If full equilibrium is reached, our ansatz no longer reproduces the correct temperature dependence of the χnumber density. However, it does give the correct final relic density, to an accuracy of abou…
A new candidate of cold dark matter arises by a novel elementary particle model: the almostcommutative AC-geometrical framework. Two heavy leptons are added to the Standard Model, each one sharing a double opposite electric charge and an own lepton flavor number The novel mathematical theory of almost-commutative geometry [1] wishes to unify gauge models with gravity. In this scenario two new heavy (m_L>100GeV), oppositely double charged leptons (A,C),(A with charge -2 and C with charge +2), are born with no twin quark companions. The model naturally involves a new U(1) gauge interaction, poss…
We investigate how well the relic density of dark matter can be predicted in mSUGRA. We determine the parameters to which the relic density is most sensitive and quantify the collider accuracy needed to match the accuracy of WMAP and PLANCK.
We study flavor oscillations in the early universe, assuming primordial neutrino-antineutrino asymmetries. Including collisions and pair processes in the kinetic equations, we not only estimate the degree of flavor equilibration, but for the first time also kinetic equilibration among neutrinos and with the ambient plasma. Typically the restrictive BBN bound on the nue-antinue asymmetry indeed applies to all flavors as claimed in the previous literature, but fine-tuned initial asymmetries always allow for a large surviving neutrino excess radiation that may show up in precision cosmological da…
Dark Phoenix: dark matter relic from its own decay
Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati(印度理工学院古瓦哈提分校);Indian Institute of Technology Goa(印度理工学院果阿分校);Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad(印度理工学院海德拉巴分校)
We place bounds on long-lived primordial relics using measurements of the diffuse gamma ray spectrum from EGRET and COMPTEL. Bounds are derived for both radiative and hadronic decays with stronger bounds applying for the latter decay mode. We present an exclusion plot in the relic density-lifetime plane that shows nontrivial dependence on the mass of the relic. The violations of scaling with mass are a consequence of the different possible scattering processes which lead to differing electromagnetic showering profiles. The tightest bounds for shorter lifetimes come from COMPTEL observations of…
We enlarge our set of supersymmetric models and update accelerator constraints in our precise calculation of the relic density of the lightest neutralino, which includes relativistic Boltzmann averaging, subthreshold and resonant annihilations, and coannihilation processes among charginos and neutralinos.
We compare the relic density of neutralino dark matter within the minimal supergravity model (mSUGRA) using four different public codes for supersymmetric spectra evaluation. While the predictions for the relic density of neutralinos are rather stable in most of the mSUGRA space, it is in the most physically interesting regions that large discrepancies can be observed, in particular the focus point, large tan beta and coannihilation regions.
We give an overview of our precise calculation of the relic density of the lightest neutralino, in which we included relativistic Boltzmann averaging, subthreshold and resonant annihilations, and coannihilation processes with charginos and neutralinos.
We evaluate the relic density of the lightest neutralino, the lightest supersymmetric particle, in the Minimal Supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model (MSSM). For the first time, we include all coannihilation processes between neutralinos and charginos for any neutralino mass and composition. We use the most sophisticated routines for integrating the cross sections and the Boltzmann equation. We properly treat (sub)threshold and resonant annihilations. We also include one-loop corrections to neutralino masses. We find that coannihilation processes are important not only for light higgsi…
The measurements of WMAP on the relic density of dark matter strongly constrain supersymmetric models. In mSUGRA where the neutralino LSP is mostly a bino only rather fine-tuned models survive. On the other hand the relic density upper limit can be easily satisfied in models with a Higgsino or wino LSP.
We consider a weak scale supersymmetric seesaw model where the Higgsino is the next-to-lightest supersymmetric particle and the right-handed sneutrino is the dark matter candidate. It is shown that, in this model, inverse decays, which had been previously neglected, may suppress the sneutrino relic density by several orders of magnitude. After including such processes and numerically solving the appropriate Boltzmann equation, we study the dependence of the relic density on the mu parameter, the sneutrino mass, and the neutrino Yukawa coupling. We find that, even though much smaller than in ea…
If the energy density of the Universe before nucleosynthesis is dominated by a scalar field phi that decays and reheats the plasma to a temperature T_{RH} smaller than the standard neutralino freeze out temperature, the neutralino relic density differs from its standard value. In this case, the relic density depends on two additional parameters: T_{RH}, and the number of neutralinos produced per phi decay per unit mass of the phi field. In this paper, we numerically study the neutralino relic density as a function of these reheating parameters within minimal supersymmetric standard models and …
The latest Planck data allow one to determine the dark matter relic density with previously unparalleled precision. In order to achieve a comparable precision on the theory side, we have calculated the full $\mathcal{O}(α_s)$ corrections to the most relevant annihilation and coannihilation processes for relic density calculations within the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM). The interplay of these processes is discussed. The impact of the radiative corrections on the resulting relic density is found to be larger than the experimental uncertainty of the Planck data.
We study the neutralino relic density and the neutralino-proton elastic scattering cross sections in the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM) with CP-violating phases. We include all the final states to the neutralino pair annihilation cross section at the tree level, taking into account the mixing between the CP-even and CP-odd neutral Higgs fields. We show that variations of the relic density and the elastic scattering cross sections with the CP-violating phases are significant. In particular, interferences between the major contributions in the neutralino annihilation cross section …
We present a code that calculates the relic density of the LSP in the MSSM. All tree-level processes for the annihilation of the LSP are included as well as all possible coannihilation processes with neutralinos, charginos, sleptons,squarks and gluinos. In all we have included over 2800 processes not counting charged conjugate states.The cross-sections extracted from CompHEP are calculated exactly. Relativistic formulae for the thermal average are used and care is taken to handle poles and thresholds by adopting specific integration routines. The input parameters can be either the soft SUSY pa…
We present a scenario of vector dark matter production during inflation containing a complex inflaton field which is charged under a dark gauge field and which has a symmetry breaking potential. As the inflaton field rolls towards the global minimum of the potential the dark photons become massive with a mass which can be larger than the Hubble scale during inflation. The accumulated energy of the quantum fluctuations of the produced dark photons gives the observed relic density of the dark matter for a wide range of parameters. Depending on the parameters, either the transverse modes or the l…
The freeze-out of massless particles is investigated. The effects due to quantum statistics, Fermi-Dirac or Bose-Einstein, of all particles relevant for the process are analyzed. Solutions of appropriate Boltzmann equation are compared with those obtained using some popular approximate methods. As an application of general results the relic density of dark radiation in Weinberg's Higgs portal model is discussed.
We describe SuperIso Relic, a public program for evaluation of relic density and flavor physics observables in the minimal supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model (MSSM). SuperIso Relic is an extension of the SuperIso program which adds to the flavor observables of SuperIso the computation of all possible annihiliation and coannihilation processes of the LSP which are required for the relic density calculation. All amplitudes have been generated at the tree level with FeynArts/FormCalc, and widths of the Higgs bosons are computed with FeynHiggs at the two-loop level. SuperIso Relic also…
We investigate the evolution of the abundance of the asymmetric thermal Dark Matter when its annihilation rate at chemical decoupling is boosted by the Sommerfeld enhancement. We perform the detailed analysis of the effect of $s$-- and $p$--wave Sommerfeld enhanced annihilation cross section on the relic abundances of asymmetric Dark Matter particle and anti--particle both in numerical and analytical way. The constraints on the coupling and asymmetric factor are given by using the observational data of the relic density of Dark Matter.
For varying values of $\tanβ$, we study the effect of CP violating phases from the soft supersymmetry breaking terms in string-inspired models on the relic abundance and detection rates of the lightest neutralino (LSP). We find that the phases have no significant effect on the LSP relic abundance but can have a substantial impact on the detection rates.
In this work, we analyze the electroweak loop corrections to the Neutralino dark matter relic density in the framework of effective coupling. In the first part, we comment on the generic features of the corrections and quantitative changes to the predicted relic density. We analyze the correlation between the characteristics of effective couplings to the nature of neutralino. Effective couplings, however, absorb only the most dominant one loop corrections and are not an exact calculation. In the second part, we assess the validity of effective couplings by comparing them to the full one loop c…
We evaluate the relic density of neutralinos in the minimal supergravity (mSUGRA) model. All 2->2 neutralino annihilation diagrams, as well as all initial states involving sleptons, charginos, neutralinos and third generation squarks are included. Relativistic thermal averaging of the velocity times cross sections is performed. We find that co-annihilation effects are only important on the edges of the model parameter space, where some amount of fine-tuning is necessary to obtain a reasonable relic density. Alternatively, at high tan(beta), annihilation through the broad Higgs resonances gives…
Charged massive particles (CHAMPs), when present during the Big Bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) era, may significantly alter the synthesis of light elements when compared to a standard BBN scenario. This is due to the formation of bound states with nuclei. This paper presents a detailed numerical and analytical analysis of such CHAMP BBN. All reactions important for predicting light-element yields are calculated within the Born approximation. Three priorly neglected effects are treated in detail:(a) photodestruction of bound states due to electromagnetic cascades induced by the CHAMP decay, (b) lat…
We discuss ILC measurements for a specific MSSM scenario with CP phases, where the lightest neutralino, a candidate for dark matter, annihilates through t-channel exchange of light staus. These prospective ILC measurements are used to fit the underlying model parameters. A collider prediction of the relic density of the neutralino from this fit gives 0.116<Omega h2<0.19 at 95%CL.
We investigate SU(5) and SO(10) GUTs with vanishing scalar masses and trilinear scalar couplings at a scale higher than the unification scale. The parameter space of the models, further constrained by b-τYukawa coupling unification, consists of a common gaugino mass and of \tanβ. We analyze the low energy phenomenology, finding that A-pole annihilations of neutralinos and/or coannihilations with the lightest stau drive the relic density within the cosmologically preferred range in a significant region of the allowed parameter space. Implications for neutralino direct detection and for CERN LHC…
Working within the framework of the minimal supergravity model with gauge coupling unification and radiative electroweak symmetry breaking, we evaluate the cosmological relic density from lightest neutralinos produced in the early universe. Our numerical calculation is distinct in that it involves direct evaluation of neutralino annihilation cross sections using helicity amplitude techniques, and thus avoids the usual expansion as a power series in terms of neutralino velocity. Thus, our calculation includes relativistic Boltzmann averaging, neutralino annihilation threshold effects, and prope…
With the latest Planck results the dark matter relic density is determined to an unprecedented precision. In order to reduce current theoretical uncertainties in the dark matter relic density prediction, we have calculated next-to-leading order SUSY-QCD corrections to neutralino (co)annihilation processes including Coulomb enhancement effects. We demonstrate that these corrections can have significant impact on the cosmologically favoured MSSM parameter space and are thus of general interest for parameter studies and global fits.
Relic density calculations are often used to constrain particle physics models, and in particular supersymmetry. We will show that the presence of additional energy or entropy before the Big-Bang nucleosynthesis can however completely change the relic density constraints on the SUSY parameter space. Therefore one should be extremely careful when using the relic density to constrain supersymmetry as it could give misleading results, especially if combined with the future collider data. Alternatively, we will also show that combining the discoveries of the future colliders with relic density cal…
micrOMEGAs is a program that calculates the relic density of the lightest supersymmetric particle in the MSSM. All tree-level processes for the annihilation of the LSP are included as well as all possible coannihilation processes. The cross-sections extracted from CompHEP are calculated exactly. Relativistic formulae for the thermal average are used and care is taken to handle poles and thresholds by adopting specific integration routines. The Higgs masses are calculated with FeynHiggsFast and the QCD corrected Higgs widths with HDECAY.
Supersymmetry can explain the observed dark matter relic density with a neutralino dark matter particle and a coannihilating, almost mass-degenerate sparticle. If this were the case in nature, a linear electron positron collider like the ILC could discover the two sparticles if their masses are in the kinematic reach of the collider. This contribution discusses which observations are necessary at the ILC for predicting the dark matter relic density correctly and for confirming that the observed lightest neutralino is the only kind of dark matter. We take the case of stau coannihilation as an e…
The cosmological relic density of the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP) of type I string derived model is calculated. This model can accommodate large values of CP violating phases, and the electron and neutron electric dipole moments satisfy the experimental constraint. We show that the constraint from the electric dipole moment on the ratio between the gaugino masses implies that the mass of the LSP, which is bino like, is close to the lightest chargino. The co-annihilation between them is very important to reduce the LSP relic density to an interesting region. We show that the SUSY pha…
We present a complete calculation of the QCD and SUSY-QCD corrections to neutralino pair annihilation into bottom quark-antiquark pairs through exchange of a pseudoscalar Higgs boson, which is the dominant process in the cosmological A-funnel region of the mSUGRA model. We present numerical predictions for the annihilation cross section and discuss the influence of the correction terms on the cold dark matter relic density with respect to recent cosmological data.
Composite states of electrically charged and QCD-colored hyperquarks (HQs) in a confining SU(N_HC) hypercolor gauge sector are a plausible extension of the standard model at the TeV scale, and have been widely considered as an explanation for the tentative LHC diphoton excess. Additional new physics is required to avoid a stable charged hyperbaryon in such theories. We classify renormalizable models allowing the decay of this unwanted relic directly into standard model states, showing that they are significantly restricted if the new scalar states needed for UV completion are at the TeV scale.…
Non-universal boundary conditions in grand unified theories can lead to nonuniversal gaugino masses at the unification scale. In R-parity preserving theories the lightest supersymmetric particle is a natural candidate for the dark matter. The composition of the lightest neutralino and the identity of the next-to-lightest supersymmetric particle are studied, when nonuniversal gaugino masses come from representations of SO(10). In these cases, the thermal relic density compatible with the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe observations is found. Relic densities are compared with the universal …
In this article, we show that in the usual type-I seesaw framework, augmented solely by a neutrino portal interaction, the dark matter (DM) relic density can be created through freeze-in in a manner fully determined by the seesaw interactions and the DM particle mass. This simple freeze-in scenario, where dark matter is not a seesaw state, proceeds through slow, seesaw-induced decays of Higgs, $W$ and $Z$ bosons. We identify two scenarios, one of which predicts the existence of an observable neutrino line.
In this paper we evaluate finite temperature corrections to the dark matter relic density within the context of minimal supersymmetry with a neutralino LSP. We identify several regions of parameter space where the WIMP annihilation cross section is especially sensitive to small corrections to the undelrlying parameters. In these regions, finite temperature effects have the potential to be important. However, we shall show by explicit calculation that these effects are small. In the regions we investigated, the maximal corrections are on the order of 10^{-4} and are therefore negligible compare…
We discuss the relic density of the lightest of the supersymmetric particles ({\small LSP}) in view of new cosmological data, which favour the concept of an accelerating Universe with a non-vanishing cosmological constant. The new bound on the Cold Dark Matter density, $Ω_{\mathrm{CDM}} h_0^2 \lesssim 0.22$, puts stringent constraints on supersymmetry preferring low supersymmetry breaking scales, in sharp contrast to electroweak precision measurements favouring large supersymmetry breaking scales. Supersymmetric predictions are in agreement with cosmological data and electroweak precision data…
The Lightest Supersymmetric Particle (LSP) makes a good Dark Matter (DM) candidate, since its relic density quite naturally comes out close to the cosmologically required value. This is true even in minimal Supergravity models with radiative symmetry breaking, which have a rather small number of free parameters. On the other hand, the experimental detection of SUSY DM might be quite difficult, necessitating km$^2$ size neutrino detectors or direct detection experiments with several tons of detector material.
We investigate the evolution of abundance of the asymmetric thermal Dark Matter when its annihilation rate at chemical decoupling is boosted by the Sommerfeld enhancement. Then we discuss the effect of kinetic decoupling on relic abundance of asymmetric Dark Matter when the interaction rate depends on the velocity. Usually the relic density of asymmetric Dark Matter is analyzed in the frame of chemical decoupling. Indeed after decoupling from the chemical equilibrium, asymmetric Dark Matter particles and anti--particles were still in kinetic equilibrium for a while. It has no effect on the cas…
We study precise calculation of neutralino relic density in the minimal supergravity model. We compare the exact formula for the thermal average of the neutralino annihilation cross section times relative velocity with the expansion formula in terms of the temperature, including all the contributions to neutralino annihilation cross section analytically. We confirm that the expansion formula fails badly near s-channel poles. We show that the expansion method causes 5-10 % error even far away from the poles.
We consider the long-range effect of the Higgs on the density of thermal-relic dark matter. While the electroweak gauge boson and gluon exchange have been previously studied, the Higgs is typically thought to mediate only contact interactions. We show that the Sommerfeld enhancement due to a 125 GeV Higgs can deplete TeV-scale dark matter significantly, and describe how the interplay between the Higgs and other mediators influences this effect. We discuss the importance of the Higgs enhancement in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model, and its implications for experiments.
The sensitivity of the lightest supersymmetric particle relic density calculation to different cosmological scenarios is discussed. In particular, we investigate the effects of modifications of the expansion rate and of the entropy content in the Early Universe. These effects, even with no observational consequences, can still drastically modify the relic density constraints on the SUSY parameter space. We suggest general parametrizations to evaluate such effects, and derive also constraints from Big-Bang nucleosynthesis. We show that using the relic density in the context of supersymmetric co…
We investigate the cosmological constraints on exotic stable matter states which arise in realistic free fermionic superstring models. These states appear in the superstring models due to a ``Wilson--line'' breaking of the unifying non--Abelian gauge symmetry. In the models that we consider the unifying $SO(10)$ gauge symmetry is broken at the string level to $SO(6)\times SO(4)$, $SU(5)\times U(1)$ or $SU(3)\times SU(2)\times U(1)^2$. The exotic matter states are classified according to the patterns of the $SO(10)$ symmetry breaking. In $SO(6)\times SO(4)$ and $SU(5)\times U(1)$ type models on…