Nonthermal production of dark matter from a late-decaying scalar field at an intermediate scale

Abstract

We examine non-thermal dark matter production from a late-decaying scalar field, with a particular attention on non-renormalizable operators of D=5 through which the scalar field decays into the standard model particles and their superpartners. We show that almost the same number of superparticles as that of particles are generally produced from the decay. To avoid the gravitino overproduction problem, the decay is favored to proceed via interactions with an intermediate cut-off scale M << M_P. This should be contrasted to the conventional scenario using the modulus decay. The bosonic supersymmetry partner of the axion, i.e., saxion, is proposed as a natural candidate for such late-decaying scalar fields. We find that a right amount of the wino/higgsino dark matter with a mass of O(100) GeV is obtained for the saxion mass around the weak scale and axion decay constant, F_A = O(10^{9-12}) GeV.