Published August 1, 2009 | Version v1
Journal article

Mirage in the sky: Nonthermal dark matter, gravitino problem, and cosmic ray anomalies

  • 1. George P. and Cynthia W. Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics, Texas A and M University, College Station, Texas 77843-4242 (United States)
  • 2. Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106 (United States)

Description

Recent anomalies in cosmic rays could be due to dark matter annihilation in our galaxy. In order to get the required large cross section to explain the data while still obtaining the right relic density, we rely on a nonstandard thermal history between dark matter freeze out and big-bang nucleosynthesis. We show that through a reheating phase from the decay of a heavy moduli or even the gravitino, we can produce the right relic density of dark matter if its self-annihilation cross section is large enough. In addition to fitting the recent data, this scenario solves the cosmological moduli and gravitino problems. We illustrate this mechanism with a specific example in the context of U(1)B-L extended minimal supersymmetric standard model where supersymmetry is broken via mirage mediation. These string motivated models naturally contain heavy moduli decaying to the gravitino, whose subsequent decay to the LSP can reheat the Universe at a low temperature. The right-handed sneutrino and the B-L gaugino can both be viable dark matter candidates with a large cross section. They are leptophilic because of B-L charges. We also show that it is possible to distinguish the nonthermal from the thermal scenario (using Sommerfeld enhancement) in direct detection experiments for certain regions of parameter space.

Additional details

Publishing Information

Journal Title
Physical Review. D, Particles Fields
Journal Volume
80
Journal Issue
3
Journal Page Range
p. 035014-035014.11
ISSN
0556-2821
CODEN
PRVDAQ

Optional Information

Notes
(c) 2009 The American Physical Society