Journal
JOURNAL OF COSMOLOGY AND ASTROPARTICLE PHYSICS
Volume -, Issue 3, Pages -Publisher
IOP Publishing Ltd
DOI: 10.1088/1475-7516/2016/03/008
Keywords
inflation; particle physics - cosmology connection; supersymmetry and cosmology; dark matter theory
Funding
- London Centre for Terauniverse Studies (LCTS)
- European Research Council via Advanced Investigator Grant [267352]
- U.K. STFC [ST/L000326/1]
- DOE [DE-FG02-13ER42020]
- Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation
- DOE at the University of Minnesota [DE-SC0011842]
- STFC [ST/L000326/1] Funding Source: UKRI
- Science and Technology Facilities Council [ST/L000326/1] Funding Source: researchfish
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We revisit gravitino production following inflation. As a first step, we review the standard calculation of gravitino production in the thermal plasma formed at the end of post-inflationary reheating when the inflator has completely decayed. Next we consider gravitino production prior to the completion of reheating, assuming that the inflaton decay products thermalize instantaneously while they are still dilute. We then argue that instantaneous thermalization is in general a good approximation, and also show that the contribution of non-thermal gravitino production via the collisions of inflaton decay products prior to thermalization is relatively small. Our final estimate of the gravitino-to-entropy ratio is approximated well by a standard calculation of gravitino production in the post-inflationary thermal plasma assuming total instantaneous decay and thermalization at a time t similar or equal to 1.2/Gamma(phi). Finally, in light of our calculations, we consider potential implications of upper limits on the gravitino abundance for models of inflation, with particular attention to scenarios for inflator decays in supersymmetric Starobinsky-like models.
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