Related papers: SuperWIMPs in Supergravity
We point out that there is no cosmological gravitino problem in a certain class of gauge-mediated supersymmetry-breaking (GMSB) models. The constant term in the superpotential naturally causes small mixings between the standard-model and…
One of the major challenges of modern physics is to decipher the nature of dark matter. Astrophysical observations provide ample evidence for the existence of an invisible and dominant mass component in the observable universe, from the…
WIMPs, weakly-interacting massive particles, have been leading candidates for particle dark matter for decades, and they remain a viable and highly motivated possibility. In these lectures, I describe the basic motivations for WIMPs,…
About one-fourth of the universe is thought to consist of dark matter. Yet there is no clear understanding about the nature of these particles. Commonly discussed dark matter candidates includes the so called WIMPs or weakly interacting…
Recent breakthroughs in cosmology reveal that a quarter of the Universe is composed of dark matter, but the microscopic identity of dark matter remains a deep mystery. I review recent progress in resolving this puzzle, focusing on two…
By using a string-inspired modular invariant supergravity, which was proved well to explain WMAP observations appropriately, a mechanism of supersymmetry breaking (SSB) and Gravitino Production just after the end of inflation are…
We study the phenomenology of generic supergravity models in which gravity mediation naturally competes with gauge mediation as the origin of supergravity-breaking. This class of hybrid models has been recently motivated in string inspired…
We consider heavy stable neutral particles in the context of supergravity and show that a gravitationally suppressed inflaton decay can produce such particles in cosmologically interesting abundances within a wide mass range $10^3 {\rm GeV}…
Gravitino is one feasible candidate for the dark matter in supergravity models. With its couplings being suppressed by the Plank mass, gravitino interacts very weakly with other particles, making its direct detection, or production at…
Thermal freeze-out is a prominent example of dark matter (DM) production mechanism in the early Universe that can yield the correct relic density of stable weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). At the other end of the mass scale,…
The identity of dark matter is one of the greatest puzzles of our Universe. Its solution may be associated with supersymmetry which is a fundamental space-time symmetry that has not been verified experimentally so far. In many…
The internal structure of the Standard Model implies a natural $\mathbb{Z}_4 \times \mathbb{Z}_3$ discrete gauge symmetry. Cancellation of the corresponding Dai--Freed anomalies requires the introduction of three right-handed neutrinos and…
We compute the cosmic relic (dark matter) density of the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP) in the framework of minimal $N=1$ Supergravity models with radiative breaking of the electroweak gauge symmetry. To this end, we re--calculate…
We summarize the main features of several dark matter candidates in extra-dimensional theories. In particular, we review Kaluza-Klein (KK) gravitons in universal extra dimensions and branons in brane-world models. KK gravitons are superWIMP…
We discuss gravitino production from reheating in models where the splitting between particle and sparticle masses can be larger than TeV, as naturally arising in the context of split supersymmetry. We show that such a production typically…
The nature of dark matter (DM) remains one of the most important unanswered questions in particle physics. Here, we propose a novel scenario for DM in which weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) can freeze-in due to a first-order…
The experimental fact that the energy density in Dark Matter and in Baryons is of the same order is one of the most puzzling in cosmology. In this letter we suggest a new mechanism able to explain this coincidence in the context of…
We investigate the signatures of neutrinos produced in the annihilation of WIMP dark matter in the Earth, the Sun and at the Galactic centre within the framework of the Inert Doublet Model and extensions. We consider a dark matter…
If weakly-interacting massive particles (WIMPs) make up the galactic dark matter halo, high densities of such particles would exist near massive bodies, such as the sun. The resulting annihilations are believed to produce neutrinos, gamma…
The gravitino is a promising supersymmetric dark matter candidate which does not require exact R-parity conservation. In fact, even with some small R-parity breaking, gravitinos are sufficiently long-lived to constitute the dark matter of…