English

Thermal production of gravitinos

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2008-11-26 v2 High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

We reconsider thermal production of gravitinos in the early universe, adding to previously considered 2 -> 2 gauge scatterings: a) production via 1 -> 2 decays, allowed by thermal masses; b) the effect of the top Yukawa coupling; c) a proper treatment of the reheating process. Our final result behaves physically (larger couplings give a larger rate) and is twice larger than previous results, implying e.g. a twice stronger constraint on the reheating temperature. Accessory results about (supersymmetric) theories at finite temperature and gravitino couplings might have some interest.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.hep-ph/0701104,
  title  = {Thermal production of gravitinos},
  author = {Vyacheslav S. Rychkov and Alessandro Strumia},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-ph/0701104},
  year   = {2008}
}

Comments

33 pages (long appendices), 12 figures. Final version to appear on PRD