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# 𝑡→𝑏𝑊ℎ⁰ and 𝑡→𝑏𝑊𝐴⁰ decays and possible CP violating effects.

## 1 Introduction

Because of its large mass, the top quark has rich decay products and this opens a new window to test the standard model (SM) and to get some clues about the new physics, beyond. In the literature there are various studies in the SM and beyond -.The rare flavor changing transitions $`tcg(\gamma ,Z)`$ have been studied in , $`tcH^0`$ in  and $`tcl_1l_2`$ in . The SM predictions of the branching ratio ($`BR`$) of the process $`tcg(\gamma ,Z)`$ is $`4\times 10^{11}(5\times 10^{13},\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1.3}\times 10^{13})`$ , and $`tcH^0`$ is at the order of the magnitude of $`10^{14}10^{13}`$, in the SM , which are not measurable quantities even at the highest luminosity accelerators. Possible new physics effects are the candidates for the enhancement of the $`BR`$’s of the above processes. $`tcH^0`$ and $`tcl_1l_2`$ decays have been analysed in  and , in the framework of the general two Higgs doublet model (model III). In these studies it has been observed that there could be a strong enhancement in the $`BR`$, almost seven orders larger compared to the one in the SM for the decay $`tcH^0`$; a measurable $`BR`$, at the order of the magnitude of $`10^810^7`$ for the decay $`tcl_1l_2`$. In  $`tcVV`$ decay has been analysed in the topcolor assisted technicolor theory.

The charged $`tb`$ transitions exist in the SM model and have been studied in the literature extensively. The top decay $`tbW`$ has been analysed (see  and references therein) in the two Higgs doublet model and $`tbWZ`$ decay has been studied in .

The present work is devoted to the analysis of the charged $`tbWh^0`$ and $`tbWA^0`$ decays in the framework of the general two Higgs doublet model (model III). This decay occurs in the tree level with the extended Higgs sector since the scalar bosons $`h^0`$ and $`A^0`$ exist in the new sector. We study the $`BR`$ of the above decays and obtain a measurable quantities, at the order of the magnitude of $`10^6`$ and $`10^8`$, respectively. Furthermore, we search the possible CP violating effects. To obtain a nonzero CP asymmetry $`A_{CP}`$ we take Yukawa coupling for $`bh^0(A^0)b`$ transition complex and introduce a new complex parameter, where its complexity comes from some type of radiative corrections, due to the model beyond the model III (see section II). We obtain a measurable $`A_{CP}`$, at the order of the magnitude of $`10^2`$ and observe that these physical quantities can give valuable information about physics beyond the SM, the free parameters existing in these models.

The paper is organized as follows: In Section 2, we present the $`BR`$ and $`A_{CP}`$ of the decay $`tbWh^0(A^0)`$ in the framework of model III. Section 3 is devoted to discussion and our conclusions.

## 2 $`tbWh^0`$ and $`tbWA^0`$ decays with possible CP violating effects.

If one respects the current mass values of $`h^0(A^0)`$, namely $`m_{h^0}85GeV`$ ($`m_{A^0}90GeV`$), the charged $`tbWh^0(A^0)`$ is kinematically possible and does not exist in the SM model. With the minimal extension of the Higgs sector the CP odd new Higgs scalar $`A^0`$ arises and the $`tbWA^0`$ decay in the tree level is permitted. In this model, $`tbWh^0`$ decay is possible in the tree level, where $`h^0`$ is the new CP even Higgs scalar and, in general, it mixes with the SM one, $`H^0`$. In this section, we study the $`BR`$ in the general two Higgs doublet model, so called model III and the possible CP violating asymmetry, beyond.

The $`tbWh^0(A^0)`$ decay is created by the charged $`tbW`$ process and the neutral $`tt^{}h^0(A^0)`$ or $`b^{}bh^0(A^0)`$ processes, which are controlled by the Yukawa interaction

$`_Y=\eta _{ij}^U\overline{Q}_{iL}\stackrel{~}{\varphi _1}U_{jR}+\eta _{ij}^D\overline{Q}_{iL}\varphi _1D_{jR}+\xi _{ij}^U\overline{Q}_{iL}\stackrel{~}{\varphi _2}U_{jR}+\xi _{ij}^D\overline{Q}_{iL}\varphi _2D_{jR}+h.c.,`$ (1)
where $`L`$ and $`R`$ denote chiral projections $`L(R)=1/2(1\gamma _5)`$, $`\varphi _i`$ for $`i=1,2`$, are the two scalar doublets, $`\overline{Q}_{iL}`$ are left handed quark doublets, $`U_{jR}(D_{jR})`$ are right handed up (down) quark singlets, with family indices $`i,j`$. The Yukawa matrices $`\eta _{ij}^{U,D}`$ and $`\xi _{ij}^{U,D}`$ have in general complex entries. By considering the gauge and $`CP`$ invariant Higgs potential which spontaneously breaks $`SU(2)\times U(1)`$ down to $`U(1)`$ as

$`V(\varphi _1,\varphi _2)`$ $`=`$ $`c_1(\varphi _1^+\varphi _1v^2/2)^2+c_2(\varphi _2^+\varphi _2)^2`$ (2)
$`+`$ $`+c_3[(\varphi _1^+\varphi _1v^2/2)+\varphi _2^+\varphi _2]^2+c_4[(\varphi _1^+\varphi _1)(\varphi _2^+\varphi _2)(\varphi _1^+\varphi _2)(\varphi _2^+\varphi _1)]`$
$`+`$ $`c_5[Re(\varphi _1^+\varphi _2)]^2+c_6[Im(\varphi _1^+\varphi _2)]^2+c_7.`$
and choosing the parametrization for $`\varphi _1`$ and $`\varphi _2`$ as

$`\varphi _1={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}\left[\left(\begin{array}{cc}0& \\ v+H^0& \end{array}\right)+\left(\begin{array}{cc}\sqrt{2}\chi ^+& \\ i\chi ^0& \end{array}\right)\right];\varphi _2={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}\left(\begin{array}{cc}\sqrt{2}H^+& \\ H_1+iH_2& \end{array}\right).`$ (9)
with the vacuum expectation values,

$`<\varphi _1>={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}\left(\begin{array}{cc}0& \\ v& \end{array}\right);<\varphi _2>=0,`$ (12)
the $`H_1`$ and $`H_2`$ becomes the mass eigenstates $`h^0`$ and $`A^0`$ respectively since no mixing occurs between two CP-even neutral bosons $`H^0`$ and $`h^0`$, in tree level. This scenerio permits one to collect SM particles in the first doublet and new particles in the second one. Furthermore the Flavor Changing (FC) interaction can be obtained as

$`_{Y,FC}=\xi _{ij}^U\overline{Q}_{iL}\stackrel{~}{\varphi _2}U_{jR}+\xi _{ij}^D\overline{Q}_{iL}\varphi _2D_{jR}+h.c.,`$ (13)
with the couplings $`\xi ^{U,D}`$ for the FC charged interactions

$`\xi _{ch}^U`$ $`=`$ $`\xi _N^UV_{CKM},`$
$`\xi _{ch}^D`$ $`=`$ $`V_{CKM}\xi _N^D,`$ (14)
where $`\xi _N^{U,D}`$ is defined by the expression

$`\xi _N^{U(D)}=(V_{R(L)}^{U(D)})^1\xi ^{U,(D)}V_{L(R)}^{U(D)}.`$ (15)
Notice that the index ”N” in $`\xi _N^{U,D}`$ denotes the word ”neutral”.

Using the relevant diagrams for the $`tbWh^0(A^0)`$ decay which are given in Fig 1 and taking into account only the real Yukawa couplings $`\xi _{N,bb}^D,\xi _{N,tt}^U`$, the matrix element square $`|M|^2(h^0)`$ ($`|M|^2(A^0)`$) reads

$`|M|_{h^0(A^0)}^2(p1,p_b,k,q)=\xi _{N,bb}^D\xi _{N,tt}^Uf_1(h^0(A^0))+(\xi _{N,bb}^D)^2f_2(h^0(A^0))+(\xi _{N,tt}^U)^2f_3(h^0(A^0))`$ (16)
where

$`f_1(h^0)`$ $`=`$ $`16|V_{tb}|^2m_bm_t(m_W^2(s_2^2(h^0)s_1^2(h^0)+2s_1(h^0)s_2(h^0))x_{h^0}`$
$`+`$ $`2s_1(h^0)((s_1(h^0)s_2(h^0))k.(p_1p_b)+2s_1(h^0)p_1.p_b)`$
$`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{m_W^2}}((s_2^2(h^0)+2s_1^2(h^0)+2s_1(h^0)s_2(h^0))(k.q)^2+2s_1(h^0)(2s_1(h^0)`$
$`+`$ $`s_2(h^0))k.qq.(p_1p_b)+8s_1^2(h^0)p_1.qp_b.q)),`$
$`f_2(h^0)`$ $`=`$ $`8|V_{tb}|^2(m_W^2(s_2(h^0)+s_1(h^0))^2x_{h^0}p_1.p_b`$
$`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{m_W^2}}k.q((s_2(h^0)+2s_1(h^0))`$
$`\times `$ $`(s_2(h^0)k.qp_1.p_b+2s_1(h^0)k.p_bq.p_1)2s_1(h^0)s_2(h^0)k.p_1p_b.q)`$
$`+`$ $`2s_1^2(h^0)(k.p_1k.p_bx_{h^0}q.p_1q.p_b)),`$
$`f_3(h^0)`$ $`=`$ $`8|V_{tb}|^2(m_W^2(4s_1(h^0)(s_1(h^0)s_2(h^0))x_tk.p_b+((s_1(h^0)+s_2(h^0))^2x_{h^0}`$
$``$ $`4s_1^2(h^0)x_t)p_1.p_b)`$
$`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{m_W^2}}k.q(s_2(h^0)(s_2(h^0)+2s_1(h^0))k.qp_1.p_b2s_1(h^0)s_2(h^0)q.p_1k.p_b+2s_1(h^0)`$
$`\times `$ $`(2s_1(h^0)+s_2(h^0))k.p_1q.p_b)`$
$`+`$ $`2s_1(h^0)(s_1(h^0)k.p_1k.p_b(2(2s_1(h^0)+s_2(h^0))x_tk.q+s_1(h^0)(x_{h^0}4x_t)q.p_1)q.p_b)),`$
$`f_1(A^0)`$ $`=`$ $`16|V_{tb}|^2m_bm_t(m_W^2(s_2^2(A^0)+s_1^2(A^0))x_{A^0}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{m_W^2}}(2s_1^2(A^0)s_2^2(A^0))(k.q)^2),`$
$`f_2(A^0)`$ $`=`$ $`8|V_{tb}|^2(m_W^2(s_2(A^0)+s_1(A^0))^2x_{A^0}p_1.p_b`$
$`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{m_W^2}}k.q((s_2(A^0)+2s_1(A^0))(s_2(A^0)k.qp_1.p_b+2s_1(A^0)k.p_bp_1.q)`$
$``$ $`2s_1(A^0)s_2(A^0)k.p_1p_b.q)+2s_1^2(A^0)(k.p_1k.p_bx_{A^0}q.p_1q.p_b)),`$
$`f_3(A^0)`$ $`=`$ $`8|V_{tb}|^2(m_W^2(s_1(h^0)s_2(h^0))^2x_{A^0}p_1.p_b`$ (17)
$`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{m_W^2}}k.q(s_2(A^0)(s_2(h^0)2s_1(h^0))k.qp_1.p_b+2s_1(A^0)(2s_1(A^0)s_2(A^0))k.p_1p_b.q)`$
$`+`$ $`2s_1(A^0)s_2(A^0)k.p_bp_1.q)+2s_1^2(A^0)(k.p_1k.p_bx_{A^0}p_1.qp_b.q)).`$
Here the functions $`s_{1(2,3)}(h^0(A^0))`$ are

$`s_1(h^0)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{g_W}{4m_W^2(1+x_t2\frac{p_1.q}{m_W^2})}},`$
$`s_2(h^0)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{g_W}{2m_W^2(1+x_{h^0}y_t2\frac{k.q}{m_W^2})}},`$
$`s_{1(2)}(A^0)`$ $`=`$ $`()s_{1(2)}(h^0A^0),`$ (18)
with weak coupling constant $`g_W`$, $`x_{h^0(A^0)}=\frac{m_{h^0(A^0)}^2}{m_W^2}`$, $`x_t=\frac{m_t^2}{m_W^2}`$ and $`y_t=\frac{m_{H^\pm }^2}{m_W^2}`$ and $`p_1`$, $`p_b`$, $`q`$ and $`k`$ are four momentum of $`t`$ quark, $`b`$ quark, W boson and Higgs scalar $`h^0(A^0)`$, respectively.

Finally, using the well known expression defined in the $`t`$ quark rest frame

$`d\mathrm{\Gamma }_{h^0(A^0)}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{(2\pi )^4}{12m_t}}\delta ^{(4)}(p_1p_bkq){\displaystyle \frac{d^3p_b}{(2\pi )^3\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2}E_b}}{\displaystyle \frac{d^3q}{(2\pi )^3\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2}E_W}}{\displaystyle \frac{d^3k}{(2\pi )^3\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2}E_{h^0(A^0)}}}`$ (19)
$`\times `$ $`|M|_{h^0(A^0)}^2(p_1,p_b,k,q)`$
and the total decay width $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_T\mathrm{\Gamma }(tbW)`$ as $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_T=1.55GeV`$, we get the $`BR`$ for the decay $`tbWh^0(A^0)`$.

Now, we would like to study a possible CP violating effects, which can give comprehensive information about the free parameters of the model used. For the process under consideration, the CP violation can be obtained by choosing the complex Yukawa couplings in general, namely, taking the parametrizations

$`\xi _{N,tt}^U=|\xi _{N,tt}^U|e^{i\theta _{tt}},`$
$`\xi _{N,bb}^D=|\xi _{N,bb}^D|e^{i\theta _{tb}}.`$ (20)
However, this choice is not enough to get non-zero $`A_{CP}`$

$`A_{CP}={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }\overline{\mathrm{\Gamma }}}{\mathrm{\Gamma }+\overline{\mathrm{\Gamma }}}}`$ (21)
where $`\overline{\mathrm{\Gamma }}`$ is the decay width for the CP conjugate process. This forces one to go beyond the model III and try to obtain a new complex quantity so that its complexity does not come from the Yukawa couplings but from some radiative corrections. Under the light of this discussion, we introduce an additional complex correction $`\chi `$ to $`bb`$ transition, which may come from the new model beyond the model III as

$`(\xi _{N,bb}^D+\xi _{N,bb}^D)`$ $`+`$ $`(\xi _{N,bb}^D\xi _{N,bb}^D)\gamma _5+\chi `$
and
$`(\xi _{N,bb}^D\xi _{N,bb}^D)`$ $``$ $`(\xi _{N,bb}^D+\xi _{N,bb}^D)\gamma _5+\chi \gamma _5,`$
Here we take the magnitude of $`\chi `$ at most $`|\chi |10^2`$, which is more than one order smaller compared to the vertex due to model III. In this case, we take the correction to the $`tt`$ transition small since the strength of $`tt`$ transition is weaker compared to strength of the $`bb`$ transition, with respect to our choice (see Discussion section).

At this stage, we introduce a model beyond the model III as follows: The multi Higgs doublet model which contains more than two Higgs doublets in the Higgs sector can be one of the candidate. The choice of three Higgs doublets brings new Yukawa couplings which are responsible with the interactions between new Higgs particles and the fermions. The Yukawa lagrangian in three Higgs doublet model (3HDM) reads

$`_Y`$ $`=`$ $`\eta _{ij}^U\overline{Q}_{iL}\stackrel{~}{\varphi _1}U_{jR}+\eta _{ij}^D\overline{Q}_{iL}\varphi _1D_{jR}+\xi _{ij}^U\overline{Q}_{iL}\stackrel{~}{\varphi _2}U_{jR}+\xi _{ij}^D\overline{Q}_{iL}\varphi _2D_{jR}+\rho _{ij}^U\overline{Q}_{iL}\stackrel{~}{\varphi _3}U_{jR}`$ (22)
$`+`$ $`\rho _{ij}^D\overline{Q}_{iL}\varphi _3D_{jR}+h.c.,`$
where $`\rho _{ij}^{U(D)}`$ is the new coupling and $`\varphi _3`$ can be chosen as

$`\varphi _3={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}\left(\begin{array}{cc}\sqrt{2}F^+& \\ H_3+iH_4& \end{array}\right),`$ (25)
with vanishing vacuum expectation value. The fields $`F^+`$ and $`H_3(H_4)`$ represent the new charged and CP even (odd) Higgs particles, respectively. Notice that the other Yukawa couplings and Higgs particles in eq. (22) are the ones existing in the model III. Now, we choose the additional Yukawa couplings $`\rho _{ij}^{U(D)}`$ real and take into account the radiative corrections to the $`bb`$ transition which comes from the contributions of third Higgs doublet for the decay under consideration. Here the complexity of the parameter should come from the radiative corrections but not from the new Yukawa couplings. We can take this complex contribution as a source for the additional part $`\chi `$. Since the number of free parameters, namely masses of new Higgs particles $`m_{F^\pm },m_{H_3},m_{H_4}`$ and the new Yukawa couplings $`\rho _{ij}^{U(D)}`$, increases, there arises a difficulty to restrict them. However, the overall uncertainity coming from these free parameters lies in the contribution $`\chi `$ and it can be overcome by the possible future measurement of the CP violation for our process.

Finally, by using the definition

$`A_{CP}^{h^0(A^0)}(E_W,E_b)={\displaystyle \frac{\frac{d^2\mathrm{\Gamma }(tbWh^0(A^0))}{dE_bdE_W}\frac{d^2\mathrm{\Gamma }(\overline{t}\overline{b}\overline{W}h^0(A^0)}{dE_bdE_W}}{\frac{d^2\mathrm{\Gamma }(tbWh^0(A^0))}{dE_bdE_W}+\frac{d^2\mathrm{\Gamma }(\overline{t}\overline{b}\overline{W}h^0(A^0)}{dE_bdE_W}}}`$ (26)
we obtain the differential $`A_{CP}(E_W,E_b)`$ for the process $`tbWh^0(A^0)`$ as

$`A_{CP}^{h^0(A^0)}(E_W,E_b)`$ $`=`$ $`|\overline{\xi }_{N,bb}^D||\chi |sin\theta _{bb}sin\theta _\chi {\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Phi }^{h^0(A^0)}}{D^{h^0(A^0)}}},`$
(27)
where

$`\mathrm{\Phi }^{h^0}`$ $`=`$ $`4m_ts_1(h^0)|V_{tb}|^2(4(2E_W^2m_ts_1(h^0)(x_t2)E_b^2(2E_W+m_t)s_2(h^0)(1+x_t)`$
$`+`$ $`E_bE_W(E_W(s_2(h^0)(1+3x_{h^0}3x_t)+4s_1(h^0)(1+2x_{h^0}))`$
$`+`$ $`m_t(s_2(h^0)+2s_1(h^0)(2x_{h^0}+x_t))))`$
$`+`$ $`m_W^2(m_t(s_2(h^0)(1+(x_{h^0}x_t)^2)+4s_1(h^0)(1+x_t+x_{h^0})+2E_b(2s_1(h^0)(1+2x_{h^0}+x_t)`$
$`+`$ $`s_2(h^0)(1+x_{h^0}x_t)(2x_t1))`$
$``$ $`2E_W(s_2(h^0)(x_{h^0}x_t)(1x_t+x_{h^0})+s_1(h^0)(4+2x_{h^0}(2+2x_{h^0}x_t)+2x_t(3x_t))))`$
$`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{8}{m_W^2}}\left(E_bE_W^2(E_b(2E_W+m_t)s_2(h^0)4E_Wm_ts_1(h^0))\right)),`$
$`\mathrm{\Phi }^{A^0}`$ $`=`$ $`4m_ts_1(A^0)|V_{tb}|^2(4(2E_W^2m_ts_1(A^0)(x_t2)E_b^2(2E_W+m_t)s_2(A^0)(1+x_t)`$ (28)
$`+`$ $`E_bE_W(E_W(s_2(A^0)(1+3x_{A^0}3x_t)+4s_1(A^0)(1+2x_{A^0}))`$
$`+`$ $`m_t(s_2(A^0)+2s_1(A^0)(2x_{A^0}+x_t))))`$
$`+`$ $`m_W^2(m_t(s_2(A^0)(1+(x_{A^0}x_t)^2)+4s_1A^0(1+x_t+x_{A^0})`$
$`+`$ $`2E_b(2s_1(A^0)(1+2x_{A^0}+x_t)+s_2(A^0)(1+x_t+2x_t^2+x_{A^0}(12x_t))`$
$`+`$ $`2E_W(s_2(A^0)(x_{A^0}x_t)(1x_t+x_{A^0})+s_1(A^0)(4+4x_{A^0}(1+x_{A^0}2x_t)+2x_t(3x_t))))`$
$`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{8}{m_W^2}}\left(E_bE_W^2(E_b(2E_W+m_t)s_2(A^0)4E_Wm_ts_1(A^0))\right)),`$
with $`\chi =e^{i\theta _\chi }|\chi |`$, $`\overline{\xi }_{N,bb}^D=e^{i\theta _{bb}}|\overline{\xi }_{N,bb}^D|`$. Notice that we do not present the functions $`D(h^0)`$ and $`D(A^0)`$ since their explicit expressions are long. Here the functions $`s_1(h^0(A^0))`$ and $`s_2(h^0(A^0))`$ are given in eq.(18).

## 3 Discussion

This section is devoted to the analysis of the $`BR`$ and $`A_{CP}`$ of the decay $`tbWh^0`$ and $`tbWA^0`$ in the framework of model III and beyond. In our numerical analysis we use the form of the coupling $`\overline{\xi }_{N,ij}^{U(D)}`$, which is defined as $`\xi _{N,ij}^{U(D)}=\sqrt{\frac{4G_F}{\sqrt{2}}}\overline{\xi }_{N,ij}^{U(D)}`$.

Since the model III contains large number of free parameters such as Yukawa couplings, $`\overline{\xi }_{N,ij}^{U(D)}`$, the masses of new Higgs bosons, $`H^\pm `$, $`h^0`$ and $`A^0`$, we try to restrict them by using experimental measurements. In our calculations, we neglect all the Yukawa couplings except $`\overline{\xi }_{N,tt}^U`$ and $`\overline{\xi }_{N,bb}^D`$, due to their their light flavor contents. In addition to this we neglect the off diagonal coupling $`\overline{\xi }_{N,tc}^U`$, since it is smaller compared to $`\overline{\xi }_{N,tt}^U`$ (see ). One of the most important experimental measurement for the prediction of the constraint region for the couplings $`\overline{\xi }_{N,tt}^U`$ and $`\overline{\xi }_{N,bb}^D`$ is the the CLEO measurement

$`BR(BX_s\gamma )=(3.15\pm 0.35\pm 0.32)\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}10}^4.`$ (29)
and our procedure is to restrict the Wilson coefficient $`C_7^{eff}`$ which is the effective coefficient of the operator $`O_7=\frac{e}{16\pi ^2}\overline{s}_\alpha \sigma _{\mu \nu }(m_bR+m_sL)b_\alpha ^{\mu \nu }`$ (see  and references therein), in the region $`0.257|C_7^{eff}|0.439`$, where the upper and lower limits were calculated using eq. (29) and all possible uncertainities in the calculation of $`C_7^{eff}`$ . In the case of the calculation of $`A_{CP}`$, $`\overline{\xi }_{N,bb}^D`$ ($`\overline{\xi }_{N,tt}^U`$) is taken complex (real) and a new small complex parameter $`\chi `$, due to the physics beyond model III, is introduced. In the following, we choose $`|r_{tb}|=|\frac{\overline{\xi }_{N,tt}^U}{\overline{\xi }_{N,bb}^D}|<1`$. Notice that, in figures, the $`BR`$ and $`A_{CP}`$ are restricted in the region between solid (dashed) lines for $`C_7^{eff}>0`$ ($`C_7^{eff}<0`$). Here, there are two possible solutions for $`C_7^{eff}`$ due to the cases where $`|r_{tb}|<1`$ and $`r_{tb}>1`$. In the case of complex Yukawa couplings, only the solutions obeying $`|r_{tb}|<1`$ exist.

In Fig. 2, we plot the $`BR(tbWh^0)`$ with respect to $`\frac{\overline{\xi }_{N,bb}^D}{m_b}`$ for $`m_{H^\pm }=400GeV`$, $`m_{h^0}=85GeV`$. As shown in this figure, the $`BR`$ is at the order of the magnitude of $`10^6`$ and it increases with the increasing values of the $`\frac{\overline{\xi }_{N,bb}^D}{m_b}`$. Its magnitude (the restriction region ) is larger (broader) for $`C_7^{eff}>0`$ compared to the one for $`C_7^{eff}<0`$.

Fig. 3 is devoted to the same dependence of the $`BR(tbWA^0)`$ for $`m_{H^\pm }=400GeV`$, $`m_{A^0}=90GeV`$. For this process the $`BR`$ is at the order of the magnitude of $`10^8`$, almost 2 order smaller compared to the $`BR(tbWh^0)`$. It increases with the increasing values of the $`\frac{\overline{\xi }_{N,bb}^D}{m_b}`$ and its magnitude (the restriction region) is larger (broader) for $`C_7^{eff}>0`$ compared to the one for $`C_7^{eff}<0`$. Furthermore, the restriction region is sensitive to the parameter $`\frac{\overline{\xi }_{N,bb}^D}{m_b}`$ and for $`C_7^{eff}<0`$, upper and lower bounds almost coincide.

Fig. 4 (5) represents $`BR(tbWh^0(A^0))`$ with respect to $`m_{h^0}(m_{A^0})`$ for $`m_{H^\pm }=400GeV`$ and $`\overline{\xi }_{N,bb}^D=30m_b`$. Here the $`BR`$ increases with the decreasing values of $`m_{h^0}(m_{A^0})`$. This can give a powerfull information about the lower limit of the mass value $`m_{h^0}(m_{A^0})`$ with the help of the possible future experimental measurement of the process under consideration. Notice that with the increasing values of $`m_{h^0}(m_{A^0})`$ the restriction regions for $`C_7^{eff}>0`$ and $`C_7^{eff}<0`$ become narrower and coincide.

Now, we would like to analyse the CP asymmetry $`A_{CP}`$ of the decay $`tbWh^0(A^0)`$. To obtain a nonzero $`A_{CP}`$ we take the coupling $`\overline{\xi }_{N,bb}^D`$ complex and introduce a new complex parameter $`\chi `$ due to the physics beyond the model III (see section II).

In Fig 6 (7) we present the $`sin\theta _{bb}`$ dependence of $`A_{CP}(tbWh^0(A^0))`$ for $`|\overline{\xi }_{N,bb}^D|=30m_b`$, $`|\chi |=10^2`$, the intermediate value of $`sin\theta _\chi =0.5`$ and $`m_{h^0}=85GeV(m_{A^0}=90GeV)`$. $`A_{CP}`$ is at the order of the magnitude of $`10^310^2`$ and slightly larger for $`C_7^{eff}<0`$ compared to the one for $`C_7^{eff}>0`$. Fig 8 (9) represents the $`sin\theta _\chi `$ dependence of $`A_{CP}(tbWh^0(A^0))`$ for $`|\overline{\xi }_{N,bb}^D|=30m_b`$, $`|\chi |=10^2`$, the intermediate value of $`sin\theta _{bb}=0.5`$ and $`m_{h^0}=85GeV(m_{A^0}=90GeV)`$. The behavior of $`A_{CP}`$ is similar to the one obtained in Fig. 6 (7). As shown in these figures, $`A_{CP}`$ is a mesurable quantity, which gives strong clues about the possible physics beyond the SM.

Now we will summarize our results:

* The $`BR`$ of the process $`tbWh^0(A^0)`$ is at the order of $`10^6`$ ($`10^8`$) in the model III and it can be measured in the future experiments. This ensures a crucial test for the new physics beyond the SM.
* The $`BR`$ is sensitive to $`\overline{\xi }_{N,bb}^D`$ and the mass value $`m_{h^0}`$ ($`m_{A^0}`$). This is important in the prediction of the lower limit of the mass $`m_{h^0}(m_{A^0})`$ with the possible future experimental measurement of the process under consideration.
* $`A_{CP}`$ is at the order of the magnitude of $`10^2`$ for the intermeditate values of $`sin\theta _{bb}`$ and and $`sin\theta _\chi `$. This a mesurable quantity, which gives a strong clue about the possible physics beyond the SM and also more beyond.

Therefore, the experimental investigation of the process $`tbWh^0(A^0)`$ will be effective for understanding the physics beyond the SM.

## 4 Acknowledgement

This work was supported by Turkish Academy of Sciences (TUBA/GEBIP).


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# Structured Adiabatic Quantum Search

## 1 Introduction

Adiabatic Quantum Computation (AQC) is a relatively new paradigm in the field of quantum computing. Whereas in the standard model of QC (SQC), an algorithm is defined as a sequence of discrete unitary transformations, AQC (see, e.g., ) considers the continuous time evolution of the quantum system, described by the Schrödinger equation

$$i\frac{d}{dt}|\mathrm{\Psi }(t)=H(t)|\mathrm{\Psi }(t)$$
(1)
with a time dependent Hamiltonian $`H(t)`$. A computational problem which has been studied extensively in both SQC and AQC is the unstructured search. In its simplest form the unstructured search corresponds to finding a single marked state (needle) in a completely unstructured database (haystack) of $`N`$ states. In the case that the physical system consists of $`n`$ two state particles (qubits), $`N=2^n`$ corresponds to the size of the complete Hilbert space for the system. Classically a random search of $`N`$ objects requires on average $`N`$ operations to pick out the marked object. It was shown by BBBV  that for SQC, the lower bound on the corresponding number of steps is of order $`\sqrt{N}`$. Grover was the first to construct a specific QC algorithm that achieved this lower bound .

In the context of AQC, the physical quantity that seems to most closely correspond to the number of steps of a SQC algorithm is the time required to do the computation. It is therefore not surprising that under fairly standard assumptions, it can be shown that the time required for the unstructured search in AQC increases as $`\sqrt{N}`$ 111In a dynamical quantum system one can always shorten the time by increasing the energy. The consequences for AQC of increasing the energy temporarily have recently been analyzed in ..

In many physical systems, it is possible to use additional structure in order to shorten the search. For example, consider a database of items with $`n`$ distinguishable bits. A maximally structured classical search would check one bit at a time in order to find the correct marked state. Such a search would require $`O(n)`$ operations. The key is that, by using the existing structure, one is able in principle to search $`n`$ two-dimensional objects, instead of a random search among $`N=2^n`$ objects.

The above example is a special case of a general class of nested searches, which have recently been analyzed  in the context of SQC. The purpose of the present paper is to study structured adiabatic quantum search. We find that additional structure shortens the running time and makes the Hamiltonian more local (concerning the interactions of the system, as is explained below). Our results for the running time are consistent with the conjecture (cf. ) that (adiabatic) quantum computation improves the running time of the corresponding classical algorithm by a square root; due to the fact that quantum computation manipulates probability amplitudes, whose squares give the corresponding probabilities.

We start with a short description of AQC in general. In Section 3 we show that the unstructured search studied by Grover leads to a spatially non-local Hamiltonian when considered in the conventional model for the implementation of quantum algorithms, namely two-level quantum systems (qubits), such as spin-1/2 particles. That is, the unstructured adiabatic search requires an $`n`$-body interaction for an $`n`$-qubit system. In Section 4, we define the notion of a structured adiabatic quantum search Hamiltonian and show that it is in general local, in the sense referred to above: it couples only a subset of the total number of qubits. We then start our detailed analysis of nested searches with the most intuitive case, the maximally structured search, and consider its adiabatic evolution and running time, which is shown to scale as $`T=O(\sqrt{n})`$. Finally, we study the general case and obtain its running time, comparing different ways of structuring the system.

## 2 Adiabatic Quantum Computation

The method of AQC is based on the use of the adiabatic theorem for considering quantum computing as continuous time evolution from some easily prepared initial state $`|\psi _i`$ to a final state $`|\psi _f`$ that encodes the solution to the computational problem. Specifically, the adiabatic theorem (see, e.g. ) states the following: a system which is described by a time-dependent Hamiltonian $`H(t)`$ will stay close to the instantaneous ground state of $`H(t)`$ provided that the time evolution is slow enough. In quantitative terms, after time $`T`$

$$|E_0;T|\mathrm{\Psi }(T)|^21ϵ^2,$$
(2)
where $`E_0`$ is the lowest energy eigenvalue and $`ϵ1`$, provided that:

$$\frac{|E_1;t|\frac{dH}{dt}|E_0;t|}{\omega _{min}^2}ϵ$$
(3)
where

$$\omega _{min}=\underset{0tT}{\mathrm{min}}[E_1(t)E_0(t)]$$
(4)
is the minimum gap between the lowest two energy eigenvalues $`E_0`$ and $`E_1`$. Thus, if (3) is satisfied, a measurement after time $`T`$ gives as result the solution with almost certainty, i.e. with probability $`1ϵ^2`$.

The time-dependent Hamiltonian that is traditionally used in AQC is constructed as the linear combination

$$H(t)=f(t)H_i+g(t)H_f$$
(5)
where $`|\psi _i`$, $`|\psi _f`$ are the ground states of $`H_i`$, $`H_f`$, respectively and $`f(t)`$ and $`g(t)`$ are usually considered to be monotonic functions such that $`f(0)=1`$, $`f(T)=0`$, $`g(0)=0`$ and $`g(T)=1`$, where $`T`$ is the total computation time.

It will be useful for what follows to note that the adiabatic theorem (3) can be modified  for the case of an $`m`$-fold degenerate first excited state. In this case, it reads

$$\underset{i=1}{\overset{m}{}}\frac{|E_1|\frac{dH}{dt}|E_0_i|^2}{\omega _{min}^4}ϵ^2.$$
(6)
## 3 Unstructured search in AQC

The goal of the search algorithm is to find a marked object $`|m`$ in an unstructured database of size $`N`$ in as few steps as possible. Classically, one has to look at $`O(N)`$ objects to find the marked one. One advantage of the quantum search is that it manipulates the amplitude of the marked state, leading to a quadratic amplification of the probability. The initial state is the superposition of all states with equal weight,

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }_0|\mathrm{\Psi }(0)=\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}\frac{1}{\sqrt{N}}|i.$$
(7)
A natural choice for a Hamiltonian that has this state as its ground state is:

$$H_i=1|\mathrm{\Psi }_0\mathrm{\Psi }_0|.$$
(8)
Correspondingly one must choose (cf. Section 4.1),

$$H_f=1|mm|,$$
(9)
which has the ground state $`|m`$. $`H_f`$ is in a sense the adiabatic analogue of the “oracle” $`\widehat{I}2|mm|`$ used in the Grover search algorithm. It projects out the marked state $`|m`$. Thus, in the framework of AQC, the initial state $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_0`$ evolves into $`|m`$ in time $`T`$, given that the Hamiltonian (5) varies slowly enough with time. In the simplest case  $`f(t)=1t/T`$ and $`g(t)=t/T`$, the minimum running time increases with $`N`$ at the same rate as for the classical search: $`T=O(N)`$. However, one can improve this by choosing $`f(t)`$ and $`g(t)`$ to vary most rapidly when the gap $`\omega `$ is the largest. For example, one can use the approach of , in which $`f(t)=1s(t)`$, $`g(t)=s(t)`$ with $`s(0)=0`$ and $`s(T)=1`$. This choice yields an adiabaticity condition of the form:

$$\frac{|E_1;s|\frac{dH(s)}{ds}|E_0;s|}{\omega ^2(s)}\left|\frac{ds}{dt}\right|ϵ.$$
(10)
One is then free to choose $`s(t)`$ so that the bound in (10) is saturated for all $`t`$. This yields a running time $`T=O(\sqrt{N})`$. Recently, it was shown  that with a more general choice of the functions $`f`$ and $`g`$ in the construction of $`H(t)`$ the running time can – in principle – be made independent of $`N`$, but at the cost of requiring a large amount of energy to be temporarily injected into the system.

We are now lead to the question of how to implement a generic AQC algorithm in a real quantum computer, and what kind of physical systems might be suitable. The conventional scheme for the implementation of quantum computation considers a system of uncorrelated 2-level quantum systems (qubits), e.g. spin $`1/2`$-particles. The 1-qubit space $`_i`$ is spanned by $`|0=\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{1}{0}\right)`$ and $`|1=\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{0}{1}\right)`$. The n-qubit space is given by the tensor product

$$=_1_2\mathrm{}_n$$
(11)
with the basis $`\{|\alpha _1,\mathrm{},\alpha _n=|\alpha _1\mathrm{}|\alpha _n|\alpha _i\{0,1\}\}`$. The marked state is $`|m=|z_1\mathrm{}z_n=|z_1\mathrm{}|z_n`$ with $`z_i\{0,1\}`$. In this framework, the final Hamiltonian

$$H_f=1|mm|$$
(12)
can be written in terms of Pauli spin matrices

$`H_f`$ $`=`$ $`1{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{n}{}}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(1(1)^{z_i}\sigma _z^{(i)})\right)`$ (13)
$``$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{i=0}{\overset{n}{}}}c_i{\displaystyle \underset{j=0}{\overset{i}{}}}\sigma _z^{(j)}.`$ (14)
In this form it is clear that the Hamiltonian contains a product of $`n`$ spin matrices, which implies interactions among all qubits. This non-locality may put constraints on possible implementations of such algorithms, at least for spin systems222If one considers AQC only as a possible simulation of SQC, the non-locality is irrelevant..

In the next section, we describe how, by using additional structure, the search can be modified to reduce the spatial non-locality in the Hamiltonian, while keeping the initial and final ground state the same. This structured search also provides a shorter computation time than the unstructured one.

## 4 Structured adiabatic search

The adiabatic theorem requires the evolution of the quantum system to be slow enough to keep the system in its ground state for all times. It seems plausible that it is “easier” for the system to stay in its ground state if there are no long range interactions, but only 2 or 3-qubit interactions. In order to find a Hamiltonian that realizes this idea, it is useful to consider the problem in the language of decision clauses etc.(cf. ):

### 4.1 Satisfiability problems, clauses and Hamiltonians

Search algorithms belong to the class of satisfiability problems. A satisfiability problem is a combination of decision clauses $`C_i`$ which have an element of $`\{0,1\}`$ (true or false) as output which depends on the values of some set of the qubits of the system. A formula is an $`n`$-bit instance of satisfiability,

$$FC_1C_2\mathrm{}C_m,$$
(15)
i.e. in general $`m`$ clauses acting on $`n`$ bits. The action of a clause or formula on an assignment can be translated into the action of a Hamiltonian on the states of a physical system (up to an overall factor): Formula (15) is mapped into

$$H(t)=H_1(t)+H_2(t)+\mathrm{}+H_n(t),$$
(16)
where each $`H_i`$ is constructed from the clause $`C_i`$ and acts only on the bits of this clause. For example, if $`C_i`$ is a two-bit clause, $`H_i`$ contains only operators that act on these two bits, it can have at most a two-body interaction term. The action of $`H_i`$ on the bits absent in $`C_i`$ is given by the identity operator. The initial state is the ground state of $`H(0)`$, and the ground state of $`H(t=T)`$ satisfies all the clauses in the formula.

In this language, the unstructured search algorithm is a single clause that acts on $`n`$ qubits and has a unique (but unknown) satisfying assignment, $`|m`$.

It should be noted that the form of $`H_f`$ given in (9) is the most general one available for an oracle search. By definition, an oracle clause acts as

$`C_m(|m)`$ $`=`$ $`0`$ (17)
$`C_m(|i)`$ $`=`$ $`1im.`$ (18)
The corresponding adiabatic Hamiltonian must therefore fulfill

$`H(t=T)|m`$ $`=`$ $`H_f|m=0`$ (19)
$`H(t=T)|i`$ $`=`$ $`H_f|i=f(T)|iim,`$ (20)
where $`f(T)`$ should be the same for all $`im`$. Therefore, $`H_f`$ is diagonal, and it reads

$`H_f`$ $`=`$ $`f(T){\displaystyle \underset{im}{}}|ii|`$ (21)
$`=`$ $`f(T)[1|mm|].`$
### 4.2 Maximally structured search

The unstructured search, which is non-local in space, corresponds to a single $`n`$-bit clause. In order to find a local Hamiltonian, it is therefore the most intuitive alternative to consider a formula of $`n`$ 1-bit clauses,

$$F=C_1C_2\mathrm{}C_n,$$
(22)
where $`C_i`$ is satisfied if and only if the i-th bit has the required value $`z_i`$ for the marked state $`|m=|z_1z_2\mathrm{}z_n`$. We call this “maximally structured” because it corresponds to the maximal splitting of the system: The adiabatic Hamiltonian which has as ground state the unique satisfying assignment of F is a sum of 1-bit versions of the oracle Hamiltonian,

$$H_f^{str}=\underset{i=1}{\overset{n}{}}h_i$$
(23)
with

$`h_i`$ $`=`$ $`1\mathrm{}1(1|z_iz_i|)1\mathrm{}1`$ (24)
$`=`$ $`1\mathrm{}1\left[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(1(1)^{z_i}\sigma _z)\right]1\mathrm{}1`$
$``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(1(1)^{z_i}\sigma _z^{(i)}),`$
which act as oracle on the i-th bit and as identity on the others. The application of $`H_f^{str}`$ on a general state $`|\alpha _1\alpha _2\mathrm{}\alpha _n`$ gives the number of qubits with $`\alpha _iz_i`$. This illustrates the crucial difference between this procedure and the unstructured search. The latter leads to the same answer, $`1`$, for all unsatisfying assignments, whereas in the present case the query gives the number $`F[|\alpha ]`$ of unsatisfied clauses. Thus, one gets additional information.

As before, the initial state $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_0`$ is the ground state of $`H_i=1|\mathrm{\Psi }_0\mathrm{\Psi }_0|`$, which can be written as

$$H_i^{str}\frac{1}{2}\underset{i=1}{\overset{n}{}}(1\sigma _x^{(i)}).$$
(25)
After some algebra (cf. ), the eigenvalues of the Hamiltonian

$$H^{str}(t)=\frac{1}{2}f(s)\underset{i=1}{\overset{n}{}}(1\sigma _x^{(i)})+\frac{1}{2}g(s)\underset{i=1}{\overset{n}{}}(1(1)^{z_i}\sigma _z^{(i)})$$
(26)
are found to be

$$E_m^{str}=\frac{n}{2}(f+g)m\sqrt{f^2+g^2}$$
(27)
where $`m=m_i`$, with $`m_i=\pm 1/2`$ representing the spin up and down of the i-th particle, corresponding to $`\alpha _i=0,1`$. The ground state is obtained for $`m_i=1/2i`$, i.e. $`m=n/2`$. The first excited state ($`m=n/21`$) is $`n`$-fold degenerate. The crucial condition for the adiabatic theorem to hold is a non-vanishing gap between the ground state and the first excited state, which is fulfilled:

$$\omega E_1^{str}E_0^{str}=\sqrt{f^2+g^2}0.$$
(28)
Note that this result corresponds to Eq.(14) of  for $`2^n=N=2`$, i.e. for $`n=1`$, the single qubit adiabatic search. The running time is determined by the adiabatic theorem, which in the case of a degenerate first excited state leads to the condition (6). The transition probability to each of the first excited states is proportional to the square of

$$_iE_1^{str}|\frac{dH}{dt}|E_0^{str}=\frac{(1)^{z_i}}{2}\frac{\dot{f}g\dot{g}f}{\sqrt{f^2+g^2}},$$
(29)
so the total transition probability is $`n`$ times Eq.(29) squared (cf. Eq.(15) in  for $`N=2`$). For an estimate of the running time, we consider the simplest case in which $`f`$ and $`g`$ are linear in $`s`$, $`f(s)=1s(t)`$ and $`g(s)=s(t)`$, which, after optimizing $`s(t)`$ as in the previous section, results in (cf.)

$$T=\sqrt{n}/ϵ=\sqrt{\mathrm{log}N}/ϵ,$$
(30)
polynomial in $`n`$. It should be noted that a similar polynomial time algorithm has been studied in .

### 4.3 General case of structured search

The transformation of the $`n`$-bit clause into $`n`$ 1-bit clauses is not the only possibility of introducing structure to the search. For example, one could also consider clauses acting on 2 qubits,

$$F_2=C_{12}C_{34}\mathrm{}C_{(n1)n}$$
(31)
corresponding to the Hamiltonian

$$H_f^{str2}=\underset{i=0}{\overset{n/21}{}}h_{[2i+1][2(i+1)]},$$
(32)
where

$$h_{[2i+1][2(i+1)]}=1\mathrm{}1(1|z_{2i+1}z_{2(i+1)}z_{2i+1}z_{2(i+1)}|)1\mathrm{}1$$
(33)
acts on the two neighboring qubits as oracle and as identity on the others.

A more interesting case with respect to realization would be

$$H_f=\underset{i=1}{\overset{n1}{}}h_{i[i+1]},$$
(34)
with overlap of the interacting qubit-pairs (see the discussion in ).

In general, any splitting of the $`N=2^n`$-dimensional Hilbert space into $`m`$ smaller spaces of dimensions $`N_i=2^{n_i}`$ with $`n_i=n`$ is possible. In order to compare the effects of different ways of splitting, we calculate the running time for several cases numerically (cf.  for the method).

In order to investigate the scaling of $`T`$ with the splitting, we define the two coefficients $`\alpha ,\beta `$ implicitly by:

$`ϵT`$ $`=`$ $`(\sqrt{m}\sqrt{2^{n/m}})^\alpha `$
$`ϵT`$ $`=`$ $`(\sqrt{m})^\beta .`$ (35)
We find (see Tables 1 and 2) that for no splitting ($`m=1`$), $`\alpha 1`$ for large $`n`$, which means the running time is $`T=O(\sqrt{N})`$, as is known from the unstructured search.

For $`m=2`$, i.e. $`n=n_1+n_2`$, the time is shortened, and the optimal value in this case is achieved for $`n_1=n_2`$.

For $`m2`$, the running time is even shorter, and it scales with the root of the dimension of the largest Hilbert space of the splitting, so it is again optimal for equal values of $`n_i`$ for all $`i`$. This can also be seen from the expression for the running time,

$$T=\frac{1}{ϵ}_0^1𝑑s|\dot{f}g\dot{g}f|\sqrt{\underset{i=1}{\overset{m}{}}\frac{N_i1}{N_i^2}\frac{1}{\omega _i^6}}$$
(36)
with

$$\omega _i=\sqrt{(fg)^2+\frac{4}{N_i}fg}$$
(37)
the gap for the $`i`$-th subsystem. For splitting into $`m`$ parts of equal size, $`N_i=2^{n/m}i`$, and Eq.(36) simplifies to

$$T=\frac{1}{ϵ}\sqrt{m}\frac{\sqrt{N_i1}}{N_i}_0^1𝑑s\frac{|\dot{f}g\dot{g}f|}{[(fg)^2+\frac{4}{N_i}fg]^{3/2}}$$
(38)
(which reduces to Eq.(20) in  for $`m=1`$) where the integral scales with $`N_i`$. For $`n/m1`$, we find $`\alpha 1`$, and

$$ϵT=\sqrt{m}\sqrt{2^{n/m}}.$$
(39)
For maximal splitting, $`m=n`$ and $`n_i=1i`$, leading to $`\beta =1`$, which results in $`T=O(\sqrt{n})`$, as shown above.

## 5 Conclusions

We have shown how additional structure affects both the running time and locality of the Hamiltonian required for an adiabatic quantum search algorithm. As expected, the more structure, the more local the Hamiltonian and the shorter the running time. In fact, the expressions we have obtained for the running time of the general structured search suggest strongly that adiabatic quantum computation consistently improves the running time for the corresponding classical algorithm by a square root. This supports the conjecture (cf. ) that the speed-up achieved by quantum computation can be directly attributed to the fact that the quantum computation algorithm manipulates probability amplitudes, whose squares give the corresponding probabilities. It would be interesting to see whether this conjecture can be proven in more general contexts. Another interesting topic for future work concerns what happens in the more general case that the pairwise interactions overlap. These and other related issues will be addressed elsewhere.

## Acknowledgments

It is a pleasure to thank N.J. Cerf, J. Currie, E. Farhi, S. Gutmann, S. Hamieh, and J. Roland for helpful discussions at various stages of this work.


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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

In the standard model (SM), CP violation is due to the presence of phases in the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) quark mixing matrix. The SM predicts large CP-violation in $`B`$ decays  and the $`B`$-factories BaBar and Belle will test the SM explanation of CP violation. One of the CP phases of the CKM unitarity triangle has been already measured: $`\mathrm{sin}2\beta =0.78\pm 0.08`$ , which is consistent with the SM.

The goal of the $`B`$\- factories is not only to to test the Standard Model (SM) picture of CP violation but also to discover evidence of new physics. Decays that get significant contributions from penguins are most likely to be affected by new physics . In particular the decay $`B\varphi K_S`$ is very interesting because it is pure penguin and is dominated by a single amplitude in the SM. Hence this decay can be used to measure $`\mathrm{sin}(2\beta )`$ and if this measurement is found to disagree with $`\mathrm{sin}(2\beta )`$ from other measurements, like $`BJ/\psi K_S`$, then it will be a clear sign of new physics .

There have been recent reported measurements of CP asymmetries in $`B\mathrm{\Phi }K_S`$ decays by BaBar

$`\mathrm{sin}(2\beta (\mathrm{\Phi }K_S))_{BaBar}=0.19_{0.50}^{+0.52}\pm 0.09`$ (1)
and Belle

$`\mathrm{sin}(2\beta (\mathrm{\Phi }K_S))_{Belle}=0.73\pm 0.64\pm 0.18`$ (2)
Combining the two measurements and adding the errors in quadrature one obtains

$$\mathrm{sin}(2\beta (\mathrm{\Phi }K_S))_{ave}=0.39\pm 0.41.$$
(3)
This result appears to be inconsistent with SM prediction as $`\mathrm{sin}(2\beta )`$ from $`BJ/\psi K_s`$ should agree with $`\mathrm{sin}(2\beta )`$ from $`B\varphi K_s`$ up to 0($`\lambda ^2`$) with $`\lambda 0.2`$. However, the measurements presented above seem to indicate a 2.8 $`\sigma `$ deviation from SM expectation and have led to speculations about evidence of new physics . In this paper we study the effect of R-parity violating SUSY for the decay $`B\varphi K_S`$ and show that the present measurements of $`\mathrm{sin}(2\beta )`$ can be easily accommodated in the presence of R-parity violating SUSY.

## 2 R-parity breaking SUSY and $`B\varphi K_S`$

In supersymmetric models, $`R`$-parity invariance is often imposed on the Lagrangian in order to maintain the separate conservation of baryon number and lepton number. The $`R`$-parity of a field with spin $`S`$, baryon number $`B`$ and lepton number $`L`$ is defined to be

$$R=(1)^{2S+3B+L}.$$
(4)
$`R`$ is $`+1`$ for all the SM particles and $`1`$ for all the supersymmetric particles.

The presence of $`R`$-parity conservation implies that super particles must be produced in pairs in collider experiments and the lightest super particle (LSP) must be absolutely stable. The LSP therefore provides a good candidate for cold dark matter. There is, however, no compelling theoretical motivation, such as gauge invariance, to impose R-parity conservation.

The most general superpotential of the MSSM, consistent with $`SU(3)\times SU(2)\times U(1)`$ gauge symmetry and supersymmetry, can be written as

$$𝒲=𝒲_R+𝒲_\overline{)}R,$$
(5)
where $`𝒲_R`$ is the $`R`$-parity conserving piece, and $`𝒲_\overline{)}R`$ breaks $`R`$-parity. They are given by

$`𝒲_R`$ $`=`$ $`h_{ij}L_iH_2E_j^c+h_{ij}^{}Q_iH_2D_j^c+h_{ij}^{\prime \prime }Q_iH_1U_j^c,`$ (6)
$`𝒲_\overline{)}R`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\lambda _{[ij]k}L_iL_jE_k^c+\lambda _{ijk}^{}L_iQ_jD_k^c+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\lambda _{i[jk]}^{\prime \prime }U_i^cD_j^cD_k^c+\mu _iL_iH_2.`$ (7)
Here $`L_i(Q_i)`$ and $`E_i(U_i,D_i)`$ are the left-handed lepton (quark) doublet and lepton (quark) singlet chiral superfields, where $`i,j,k`$ are generation indices and $`c`$ denotes a charge conjugate field. $`H_{1,2}`$ are the chiral superfields representing the two Higgs doublets.

The $`\lambda `$ and $`\lambda ^{}`$ couplings in \[Eq. (7)\], violate lepton number conservation, while the $`\lambda ^{\prime \prime }`$ couplings violate baryon number conservation. There are 27 $`\lambda ^{}`$-type couplings and 9 each of the $`\lambda `$ and $`\lambda ^{\prime \prime }`$ couplings as $`\lambda _{[ij]k}`$ is antisymmetric in the first two indices and $`\lambda _{i[jk]}^{\prime \prime }`$ is antisymmetric in the last two indices. The non-observation of proton decay imposes very stringent conditions on the simultaneous presence of both the baryon-number and lepton-number violating terms in the Lagrangian . It is therefore customary to assume the existence of either $`L`$-violating couplings or $`B`$-violating couplings, but not both. The terms proportional to $`\lambda `$ are not relevant to our present discussion and will not be considered further.

The antisymmetry of the $`B`$-violating couplings, $`\lambda _{i[jk]}^{\prime \prime }`$ in the last two indices implies that there are no operators that can generate the $`bs\overline{s}s`$ transition, and hence cannot contribute to $`B\varphi K_S`$ at least at the tree level.

We now turn to the $`L`$-violating couplings. In terms of four-component Dirac spinors, these are given by

$`_\lambda ^{}`$ $`=`$ $`\lambda _{ijk}^{}[\stackrel{~}{\nu }_L^i\overline{d}_R^kd_L^j+\stackrel{~}{d}_L^j\overline{d}_R^k\nu _L^i+(\stackrel{~}{d}_R^k)^{}(\overline{\nu }_L^i)^cd_L^j`$ (8)
$`\stackrel{~}{e}_L^i\overline{d}_R^ku_L^j\stackrel{~}{u}_L^j\overline{d}_R^ke_L^i(\stackrel{~}{d}_R^k)^{}(\overline{e}_L^i)^cu_L^j]+h.c.`$
For the $`bs\overline{s}s`$ transition, the relevant Lagrangian is

$$L_{eff}=\frac{\lambda _{i32}^{}\lambda _{i22}^{}}{m_{\stackrel{~}{\nu }_i}^2}\overline{s}\gamma _Rs\overline{s}\gamma _Lb+\frac{\lambda _{i22}^{}\lambda _{i23}^{}}{m_{\stackrel{~}{\nu }_i}^2}\overline{s}\gamma _Ls\overline{s}\gamma _Rb,$$
(9)
where $`\gamma _{RL}=\frac{(1\pm \gamma _5)}{2}`$. There are a variety of sources which bound the above couplings  but the present bounds are fairly weak and the contribution from the L-violating couplings can significantly affect $`B\varphi K_S`$ measurements.

In the SM, the amplitude for $`B\varphi K_S`$, can be written within factorization as222 This decay has been recently studied in QCD factorization in Ref.

$`A_{\varphi K_S}^{SM,}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{G_F}{\sqrt{2}}}V_{tb}V_{ts}^{}[a_3^t+a_4^t+a_5^t{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}a_7^t{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}a_9^t{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}a_{10}^t`$
$`a_3^ca_4^ca_5^c+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}a_7^c+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}a_9^c+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}a_{10}^c]Z,`$
$`Z`$ $`=`$ $`2f_\varphi m_\varphi F_{BK}(m_\varphi ^2)\epsilon ^{}p_B,`$ (10)
where $`f_\varphi `$ is the $`\varphi `$ decay constant, $`F_{BK}`$ is the $`BK`$ semileptonic form factor. The $`a_i^{t,c}`$ are the usual combination of Wilson’s coefficient in the effective Hamiltonian. For $`a_i`$ as well as the quark masses we use the values used in Ref. The R-parity contribution can be written as,

$`A_{\varphi K_S}^\overline{)}R`$ $`=`$ $`(X_1+X_2)Z`$
$`X_1`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\lambda _{i32}^{}\lambda _{i22}^{}}{24m_{\stackrel{~}{\nu }_i}^2}}`$
$`X_2`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\lambda _{i22}^{}\lambda _{i23}^{}}{24m_{\stackrel{~}{\nu }_i}^2}}`$ (11)
We write

$$X_1+X_2=\frac{X}{12M^2}e^{i\varphi }$$
(12)
where $`\varphi `$ is the weak phase in the R-parity violating couplings and M is some mass scale with $`Mm_{\stackrel{~}{\nu }_i}`$. We require $`|X|`$ to be such that $`|A_{\varphi K_S}^{SM,}|`$ and $`|A_{\varphi K_S}^\overline{)}R|`$ are of the same size, which then fixes $`|X|1.5\times 10^3`$ for $`M=100`$ GeV which is smaller than the existing constraints on $`|X|`$ from Ref.

We can now calculate $`\mathrm{sin}(2\beta )_{eff}`$ from

$`\mathrm{sin}(2\beta )_{eff}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2Im[\lambda _f]}{(1+|\lambda _f|^2)}}`$
$`\lambda _f`$ $`=`$ $`e^{2i\beta }{\displaystyle \frac{\overline{A}}{A}}`$ (13)
where $`A=A_{\varphi K_S}^{SM,}+A_{\varphi K_S}^\overline{)}R`$ and $`\overline{A}`$ is the amplitude for the CP-conjugate process. Note that from Eq. 10 and Eq. 11 $`\mathrm{sin}(2\beta )_{eff}`$ is independent of $`Z`$ and hence free from uncertainties in the form factor and decay constants. It is also possible that non factorizable effects may be less important in $`\mathrm{sin}(2\beta )_{eff}`$ as we are taking ratios of amplitudes. In Fig. 1 we plot $`\mathrm{sin}(2\beta )_{eff}`$ versus the phase $`\varphi `$ and it is clear from the figure that the present measurements in Eq. 1 and Eq. 2 can be easily explained.

We now turn to the calculation of branching ratios and the direct CP asymmetry. The measured branching ratio for $`(B\mathrm{\Phi }K^0)`$ is $`(8.1_{2.5}^{+3.1}\pm 0.8)\times 10^6`$  while Belle measures a value for the direct CP asymmetry, i.e. the cosine term $`C=0.56\pm 0.41\pm 0.12`$  which is consistent with zero. The calculation of the branching ratio as well as the direct CP asymmetry is difficult and suffers from hadronic uncertainties even within factorization. The branching ratio, within naive factorization, depends on the form factors and the $`\varphi `$ decay constants. The uncertainties in these quantities can easily change the predicted branching ratio by a factor of 2 or so. The direct CP asymmetry could potentially be large as there are two interfering amplitude of the same size. However the direct CP asymmetry crucially depends on the strong phase which can be perturbatively generated through tree level rescattering in factorization. The size of this strong phase, in this case, depends on the charm quark mass as well and the gluon momentum in the penguin diagram. Using the values of the formfactor $`F_{BK}=`$ 0.38 and the $`\varphi `$ decay constant $`f_\varphi =`$ 0.237  and taking a typical value for the phase $`\varphi =1.5`$ radians(86 degrees) we obtain the branching ratio for $`(B\mathrm{\Phi }K^0)=9.5\times 10^6`$, $`\mathrm{sin}2\beta =0.57`$ and the direct CP asymmetry $`35`$ %. We have used $`m_c=1.4`$ GeV, $`m_b=5`$ GeV and the gluon momentum $`q^2=m_b^2/2`$ to obtain these numbers. We would like to stress here that even in the absence of the strong phase one can still easily accommodate the data for $`\mathrm{sin}2\beta `$ in $`B\varphi K_S`$. If in fact the strong phases are small one could look for T- violating correlation in $`B\varphi K^{}`$ or in the corresponding $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_b`$ decays.

We also point out that the R-parity violating operator for $`bs\overline{s}s`$ is not the related to the $`bs\overline{u}(\overline{d})u(d)`$, unlike some models of new physics. Hence R-parity violating effects in $`B\varphi K_S`$ can be very different than in $`BK\pi `$ for example which is a $`bs\overline{u}u`$ transition. However the new R-parity violating SUSY generated $`bs\overline{s}s`$ operators will affect decays like $`BK(K^{})\eta (\eta ^{})`$, $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_b\mathrm{\Lambda }\eta (\eta ^{})`$, $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_b\mathrm{\Lambda }\varphi `$ etc .

In conclusion, recent measurements of CP asymmetry in $`B\varphi K_S`$ appear to be inconsistent with Standard Model expectations. We show that the effect of R-parity-violating SUSY can easily accommodate the data.

Acknowledgements: This work was financially supported by NSERC of Canada.


text:
# Supersymmetric Dark Matter and the Reheating Temperature of the Universe

## I Introduction

Supersymmetric dark matter provides one of the hottest topics at the border between Cosmology and Particle Physics. This is due to the fact that in $`R`$–parity conserving Supersymmetric theories the Lightest Supersymmetric Particle (LSP) is stable and may provide the cold dark matter, whose existence is inferred by a large number of independent observations DM ; cosmo\_params . Among the different supersymmetric candidates, the neutralino turns out to be a perfect dark matter particle, since it has neither charge nor colour, its only interactions being of the weak type.

The present abundance of neutralinos depends on the thermal history of the Universe. In the early Universe interactions may keep neutralinos in thermal equilibrium with the radiation bath until their abundance freezes out at a temperature $`T_F`$. The neutralino mass is constrained by accelerator data to be heavier then a few tens of GeV. This implies that it decouples in the early Universe when it is non relativistic, at $`T_F`$ in the GeV range. This picture is correct if the maximum temperature in the radiation-dominated era, which from now on we will refer to as the reheating temperature $`T_{RH}`$, is much larger than the freeze-out temperature $`T_F`$. If this is the case, the neutralino relic abundance turns out to be:

$$\mathrm{\Omega }_\chi h^2\frac{\rho _\chi }{\rho _c}h^2\frac{2.610^{10}\mathrm{GeV}^2}{\sigma _{\mathrm{ann}}v}$$
(1)
where $`\rho _c1.8791h^2\times 10^{29}`$ g cm-3 is the critical density, $`h`$ is the Hubble constant in units of 100 km sec-1 pc-1, while $`\sigma _{\mathrm{ann}}`$ is the WIMP pair–annihilation cross section, $`v`$ is the relative velocity between the two annihilating particles, and brackets denote thermal average. Indeed, what specifically makes the neutralino an ideal dark matter candidate is that in Eq. (1) the value of the annihilation cross section, calculated in a wide variety of susy models, may yield a result for $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\chi h^2`$ which falls in the correct interval suggested by present day observations for the amount of non–baryonic dark matter in the UniverseDM ; cosmo\_params :

$$0.05<\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{M}h^2<0.3.$$
(2)
When exploring the neutralino parameter space and its chances of discovery both in accelerator and non–accelerator searches, this argument has been usually turned the other way around, and Eq. (2) used as a constraint on the neutralino parameter space. Depending on the particular supersymmetric scenario, this may have important consequences on the allowed supersymmetric configurations. In particular, in Supergravity–inspired models (SUGRA), the allowed neutralino parameter space turns out to be severely reduced by requiring that $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\chi h^2`$ falls inside the interval defined by Eq. (2) Berezinsky:1995cj ; Berezinsky:1996ga ; noi\_sugra ; Ellis.HOW ; Ellis.FGO ; Ellis:2002wv ; Ellis.more ; Feng ; Arnowitt ; Nath ; Roszkowski .

The robustness of these constraints relies on the cosmological assumptions that lead to Eq. (1). Indeed, the thermal history of the Universe before the epoch of nucleosynthesis is unknown. The maximum temperature in the radiation-dominated era $`T_{RH}`$ may have been as low as 1 MeV (but not smaller in order not to spoil the nucleosynthesis predictions). The possibility of a low reheating temperature of the Universe has been recently discussed in Ref. Giudice:2000ex . There it was shown that a low reheating temperature has important implications for many topics in cosmology such as axion physics, leptogenesis and nucleosynthesis constraints on decaying particles. In particular, it was shown that stable weakly interacting massive particles may be produced even if the reheating temperature is much smaller than the freeze-out temperature of the dark matter particles, $`T_{RH}<T_F`$, and that the dependence of the present abundance on the mass and the annihilation cross section of the dark matter particle may differ drastically from standard results111Low reheating scenarios lead as well to a new perspective on baryogenesis Davidson:2000dw  and to the possibility that massive neutrinos may play the role of warm dark matter Giudice:2000dp ..

The goal of this paper is twofold: first, we wish to extend the analysis of Ref. Giudice:2000ex  and perform a quantitative study of the case of neutralinos in SUGRA scenarios, analyzing in detail the impact that a low $`T_{RH}`$ may have for the present neutralino relic abundance; secondly, we aim at providing a lower bound on the reheating temperature. The logic is the following. All matter is produced at the end of inflation reviewinf  when all the vacuum energy stored into the inflaton field is released and the Universe becomes radiation-dominated with the initial temperature $`T_{RH}`$ . During the reheating process, particles are generated through thermal scatterings and quickly thermalize. Among them, dark matter particles may be also produced but their final number depends strongly on the reheating temperature. If the latter is too small, the thermal bath does not give rise to a number of neutralinos large enough to make them good candidates for dark matter. This leads to a lower limit on $`T_{RH}`$. We will find that the reheating temperature needs to be larger than about 1 GeV for neutralinos to be good dark matter candidates222In this paper we suppose that neutralinos are produced during the reheating process only through thermal scatterings. Another source might be the direct decay of the inflaton field into neutralinos Moroi:1999zb . This introduces though another unknown parameter, the decay rate of the inflaton field into neutralinos, and we do not consider this possibility any further..

The plan of the paper is as follows. In Section II we briefly recall the calculation of a WIMP relic abundance both in the low–reheating scenario and in the standard case. In Section III the specific supersymmetric models which will be considered in our analysis are introduced. In Section IV we will discuss our results. Section V is devoted to our conclusions.

## II Neutralino relic abundance: the standard scenario and the low reheating temperature scenario

In this section we outline the ingredients which are relevant to the calculation of the neutralino relic abundance both in the standard radiation–dominated scenario and in the low reheating early Universe scenario introduced in Ref. Giudice:2000ex . We address the reader to Refs. Bottino:1993zx ; Giudice:2000ex  for further details.

### II.1 The Standard Scenario

The number density $`n_\chi `$ of neutralinos in the early Universe is governed by the Boltzmann equation which takes into account both the expansion of the Universe and the neutralino interactions in the primordial plasma:

$$\frac{dn_\chi }{dt}=3Hn_\chi \sigma _{\mathrm{ann}}v\left[n_\chi ^2(n_\chi ^{\mathrm{eq}})^2\right],$$
(3)
where $`H`$ is the Hubble parameter, $`t`$ denotes time and $`n_\chi ^{\mathrm{eq}}`$ is the neutralino equilibrium number density. In the r.h.s. of Eq. (3), the first term describes the Universe expansion, while the second term takes into account the change in the $`\chi `$ number density due to annihilation and inverse–annihilation processes.

At high temperatures, the evolution of $`n_\chi `$ closely tracks its equilibrium value $`n_\chi ^{\mathrm{eq}}`$. In this regime the interaction rate of the $`\chi `$ particles is strong enough to keep them in thermal equilibrium with the plasma. As temperature decreases, for heavy particles like neutralinos the quantity $`n_\chi ^{\mathrm{eq}}`$ becomes exponentially suppressed and therefore the interaction rate $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=n_\chi \sigma _{\mathrm{ann}}v`$ turns out to be rapidly ineffective in maintaining neutralinos in thermal equilibrium: when the $`\chi `$’s mean free path becomes of the order of the Hubble scale, $`\chi `$’s interactions are freezed–out and the $`\chi `$’s number density per comoving volume is freezed–in. This situation occurs at a temperature $`T_F`$ (freeze–out temperature) and clearly depends on the strength of $`\chi `$’s interactions.

By integrating the Boltzmann equation of Eq. (3) up to the present time, one finds the neutralino relic density $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\chi h^2`$:

$$\mathrm{\Omega }_\chi h^2=\frac{m_\chi n_\chi (T=0)}{\rho _c}h^2.$$
(4)
A simple analytic approximation of the solution of the Boltzmann equation (3) allows us to write down explicitly both the neutralino relic abundance:

$$\mathrm{\Omega }_\chi h^28.77\times 10^{11}\frac{1}{g_{}^{1/2}(T_{F,std})}\frac{\mathrm{GeV}^2}{\sigma _{\mathrm{ann}}v_{\mathrm{int}}}.$$
(5)
and the value of the freeze-out temperature for the standard scenario $`T_F=T_{F,std}`$ in the implicit form:

$$x_{F,std}\mathrm{ln}\left[0.038\frac{gm_\chi M_Px_{F,std}^{1/2}}{g_{}^{1/2}(T_{F,std})}\sigma _{\mathrm{ann}}v_F\right].$$
(6)
where $`x_{F,std}m_\chi /T_{F,std}`$ and $`\sigma _{\mathrm{ann}}v_F`$ denotes the value of $`\sigma _{\mathrm{ann}}v`$ at the freeze-out temperature. In Eqs. (5,6) $`M_P`$ denotes the Planck mass, $`g`$ is the number of internal degrees of freedom of $`\chi `$, $`g_{}(T_F)`$ is the effective number of degrees of freedom of the plasma at the freeze-out and $`\sigma _{\mathrm{ann}}v_{\mathrm{int}}`$ denotes the integrated value of $`\sigma _{\mathrm{ann}}v`$ from $`T_F`$ up to the present temperature. Making use of the non–relativistic first–order expansion of $`\sigma _{\mathrm{ann}}v`$ in terms of the variable $`xm_\chi /T`$:

$$\sigma _{\mathrm{ann}}v=\stackrel{~}{a}+\stackrel{~}{b}x^1,$$
(7)
we have: $`\sigma _{\mathrm{ann}}v_{\mathrm{int}}=\stackrel{~}{a}x_F^1+\stackrel{~}{b}x_F^2/2`$. Eq. (5) shows the well know result that the present abundance of a cold relic particle is inversely proportional to its annihilation cross section: $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\chi h^2\sigma _{\mathrm{ann}}v_{\mathrm{int}}^1`$.

A crucial point in this discussion is that, in the standard cosmological scenario, freeze–out occurs in a phase of the evolution of the Universe when the expansion is adiabatic and the energy density is dominated by radiation: $`Ta^1`$ and $`HT^2a^2`$. These relations between the temperature, the scale factor $`a`$ and the Hubble parameter are modified in the reheating phase of the low reheating–temperature scenario discussed in the next Section: if freeze–out occurs during the reheating phase, a lower neutralino relic abundance at present time is obtained.

### II.2 A low reheating–temperature scenario

It is by now accepted that during the early epochs of the Universe there was a primordial stage of inflation reviewinf  responsible for the observed homogeneity and isotropy of the present Universe as well as for the generation of the cosmological perturbations.

The radiation–dominated era of the Universe is usually assumed to be originated by the decay of the coherent oscillations of a scalar field, the inflaton field, whose vacuum energy has driven inflation333 Identifying this scalar field with the inflaton field is not strictly necessary. It might well be identified with some massive nearly stable particle, such as some light modulus field present in supersymmetric and (super)string models. In such a case, after inflation the Universe might have been matter dominated by the energy density of this modulus and then become radiation dominated after its decay. In other words, there might have been more than one reheating process during the thermal history of the Universe. Needless to say, the one relevant for us is the latest.. The decay of the scalar field into light degrees of freedom and their subsequent thermalization, called reheating, leaves the Universe at a temperature $`T_{RH}`$, which represents the largest temperature of the plasma during the subsequent radiation–dominated epoch, when temperature is a decreasing function of time. The onset of the radiation dominated era is in fact placed at the temperature $`T_{RH}`$, i.e. at the end of the reheating phase.

Usually $`T_{RH}`$ is assumed to be very large and – in any case – larger than the neutralino freeze-out temperature $`T_F`$. This fact implies that the present–day relic abundance of any particle which freezes–out at a temperature $`T_F<T_{RH}`$ is not affected by the history of the Universe during the reheating phase. However the only information we have on the smallest value of $`T_{RH}`$ is from requiring a successful period of primordial nucleosynthesis, $`T_{RH}>1`$ MeV. Therefore, from a phenomenological point of view, $`T_{RH}`$ is actually a free parameter. This implies that the situation in which a relic particle decoupled from the plasma before reheating was completed (i.e.: $`T_F>T_{RH}`$) could be a viable possibility, with important implications in the calculation of the cosmological abundance of relic particles.

Let us consider the scenario of early Universe discussed in Ref. Giudice:2000ex . During the reheating epoch, the energy density of the Universe is dominated by the coherent oscillations of a scalar field $`\varphi `$. This period begins at a time $`H_I^1`$ and lasts until a time $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_\varphi ^1`$ set by the scalar field decay rate $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_\varphi `$. The dynamics of the system for $`H_I^1<t<\mathrm{\Gamma }_\varphi ^1`$ is described by the Boltzmann equations for the energy densities $`\rho _{\varphi ,R,\chi }`$ of the three coupled components: the (unstable) massive field $`\varphi `$, radiation $`R`$, and the (stable) massive WIMP $`\chi `$’s:

$`{\displaystyle \frac{d\rho _\varphi }{dt}}`$ $`=`$ $`3H\rho _\varphi \mathrm{\Gamma }_\varphi \rho _\varphi ,`$ (8)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{d\rho _R}{dt}}`$ $`=`$ $`4H\rho _R+\mathrm{\Gamma }_\varphi \rho _\varphi +(2E_\chi )\sigma _{\mathrm{ann}}v\left[n_\chi ^2(n_\chi ^{eq})^2\right],`$ (9)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{dn_\chi }{dt}}`$ $`=`$ $`3Hn_\chi \sigma _{\mathrm{ann}}v\left[n_\chi ^2(n_\chi ^{eq})^2\right],`$ (10)
where the quantity $`2E_\chi `$ represents the average energy released in each $`\chi \chi `$ annihilation. Notice that here we assume that $`\varphi `$ decays into radiation, but not into $`\chi `$’s. In the following we will recall the main properties of the system described by Eqs. (8,9,10), addressing the reader to Ref.Giudice:2000ex  for a complete discussion.

At very early times the energy density of the Universe is dominated by the scalar filed $`\varphi `$, and both the radiation and WIMP energy densities are negligible. As the scalar field decays the temperature $`T`$ grows until it reaches a maximum value $`T_{MAX}`$ and then decreases as $`Ta^{3/8}`$ up to the temperature $`T_{RH}`$ at the time $`t\mathrm{\Gamma }_\varphi ^1`$ which determines the end of reheating (in this second stage the temperature of the radiation produced in the first stage is cooled down by expansion, and the entropy release due to the decay of $`\varphi `$ induces a gentler cooling compared to the radiation–dominated case). This non–standard relation between the temperature and the scale factor may significantly affect the calculation of the $`\chi `$ particles relic abundance, depending on the duration and on the details of the reheating phase.

The relevant mass scales which can help in understanding the different regimes which may occur are: the mass of the WIMP $`m_\chi `$, the temperature $`T_F`$ of the WIMP freeze–out (which can happen before or after the reheating has been completed), the temperature at the end of the reheating phase $`T_{RH}`$ and the maximal temperature reached during the reheating phase $`T_{MAX}`$. Two hierarchies are present for these mass scales: $`T_{RH}<T_{MAX}`$ and, since we are dealing with cold relics which decouple when non–relativistic, $`T_F<m_\chi `$.

The relation between $`m_\chi `$ and $`T_{MAX}`$ determines whether the WIMPs, which are produced during the reheating phase, become relativistic ($`T_{MAX}>m_\chi `$) or not ($`T_{MAX}<m_\chi `$). More important is to determine whether the $`\chi `$ particles reach thermal equilibrium during the reheating phase. This is determined by the strength of their interactions, and in particular it depends on $`\sigma _{\mathrm{ann}}v`$. According to the values of the WIMP mass and annihilation cross section, two possible non–standard regimes may be schematically singled out for the WIMP relic abundance:

(i) The $`\chi `$ particles generated during reheating are always non–relativistic and never reach thermal equilibrium. Integration of Eqs.(8,9,10) shows that the process of $`\chi `$ production takes its main contribution around the temperature $`T_{}m_\chi /4`$ and is exponentially suppressed outside a narrow interval centered on $`T_{}`$ Giudice:2000ex . So most of the $`\chi `$ particles are produced at $`T_{}`$. For $`T<T_{}`$ the total number of $`\chi `$’s is frozen and their density is diluted by expansion. The condition $`n_\chi (T=0)<n_\chi ^{eq}(T_{})`$ implies an upper limit on $`\sigma _{\mathrm{ann}}v_{}\sigma _{\mathrm{ann}}v_{(T=T_{})}`$ of the order of Giudice:2000ex :

$$\sigma _{ann}v_{}<7\times 10^{14}\frac{2}{g}\left[\frac{g_{}(T_{})}{10}\right]\left[\frac{10}{g_{}(T_{RH})}\right]^{1/2}\left(\frac{m_\chi }{100\mathrm{GeV}}\right)\left(\frac{100\mathrm{MeV}}{T_{RH}}\right)^2\mathrm{GeV}^2.$$
(11)
In this regime the WIMP relic density turns out to be proportional to the WIMP self–annihilation cross section: $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\chi h^2\sigma _{\mathrm{ann}}v_{}`$, instead of being inversely proportional, as in the standard case. We anticipate here that for the case of neutralinos in supersymmetric models, this situation only occurs when the reheating temperature is smaller than about 300 MeV. In this situation the neutralino relic density is significantly suppressed.

(ii) The $`\chi `$ particles reach thermal equilibrium, and then freeze–out when non–relativistic before the reheating phase is concluded, i.e. at a temperature $`T_F=T_{F,rh}>T_{\mathrm{RH}}`$. During the phase when they reach thermal equilibrium, the $`\chi `$ particles may or may not become relativistic, depending on the value of $`T_{MAX}`$. In any case, they decouple as non–relativistic, leading to a cold relic. The usual freeze–out condition is modified compared to the standard case because the energy density is dominated by the scalar field and the relation between the Hubble constant and the temperature is given by $`HT^4`$, as compared to the radiation–dominated case where $`HT^2`$. The first consequence of this fact is that freeze–out occurs earlier and the WIMP density at $`T_{F,rh}`$ turns out to be higher. However, as the Universe cools down from $`T_{F,rh}`$ to $`T_{RH}`$, due to the entropy produced by the $`\varphi `$ decays, the expansion dilutes $`n_\chi `$ by a factor $`(T_{RH}/T_{F,rh})^8`$, which is much smaller than the dilution factor in the radiation–dominate case $`(T_{RH}/T_{F,std})^3`$. When the two effects are combined, the final result is a suppression of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\chi `$ by roughly a factor $`T_{RH}^3T_{F,std}/(T_{F,rh})^4`$ as compared to the standard case. An analytic approximation of the ensuing result for the $`\chi `$ relic abundance is given by Giudice:2000ex :

$$\mathrm{\Omega }_\chi h^22.3\times 10^{11}\frac{g_{}^{1/2}(T_{RH})}{g_{}(T_{F,rh})}\frac{T_{RH}^3\mathrm{GeV}^2}{m_\chi ^3(\stackrel{~}{a}x_{F,rh}^4+4\stackrel{~}{b}x_{F,rh}^5/5)},$$
(12)
where the freeze–out temperature during the reheating–phase $`T_{F,rh}`$ ($`x_{F,rh}m_\chi /T_{F,rh}`$) is Giudice:2000ex :

$$x_{F,rh}\mathrm{ln}\left[0.015\frac{gg_{}^{1/2}(T_{RH})}{g_{}(T_{F,rh})}\frac{M_PT_{RH}^2}{m_\chi }(\stackrel{~}{a}x_{F,rh}^{5/2}+5\stackrel{~}{b}x_{F,rh}^{3/2}/4)\right].$$
(13)
In both Eqs. (12) and (13) we have used the annihilation cross–section expansion of Eq. (7).

Obviously, if the decoupling of the $`\chi `$ particles from the plasma occurs after the reheating phase is concluded, the standard scenario is recovered and the relic abundance has the ordinary expression of Eq. (5).

In the following Sections we will perform a detailed calculation of the neutralino relic abundance in a Supergravity framework in order to study the consequences of the low reheating temperature scenario outlined above. In our analysis we will make use of the analytical solutions given in Eqs.(5,6) and Eqs.(12,13), appropriately interpolated in the intermediate regime where $`T_F`$ is close to $`T_{RH}`$ (the interpolation has been determined on the basis of numerical solutions of the relevant differential equations). We have numerically verified that the analytical solutions are accurate enough for our purposes when compared with full numerical solution of the relevant Boltzmann equations of Eq. (3) and Eqs. (8,9,10).

## III The neutralino in Minimal Supergravity

Supersymmetric theories naturally predict the existence of viable dark matter candidates if $`R`$–parity is conserved, since this symmetry prevents the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP) from decaying. The nature and the properties of the LSP depend on the way supersymmetry is broken. In models where supersymmetry breaking is realized through gravity– (or also anomaly–) mediated mechanisms, the LSP turns out to be quite naturally the neutralino, defined as the lowest–mass linear superposition of photino ($`\stackrel{~}{\gamma }`$), zino ($`\stackrel{~}{Z}`$) and the two higgsino states ($`\stackrel{~}{H}_1^{}`$, $`\stackrel{~}{H}_2^{}`$): $`\chi a_1\stackrel{~}{\gamma }+a_2\stackrel{~}{Z}+a_3\stackrel{~}{H}_1^{}+a_4\stackrel{~}{H}_2^{}`$.

Even assuming a minimal supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model, the supersymmetric theories may be explored in a variety of different schemes, ranging from those based on universal Berezinsky:1995cj ; Ellis.HOW ; Berezinsky:1996ga ; noi\_sugra ; Ellis.FGO ; Ellis.more ; Feng ; Arnowitt ; Nath ; Roszkowski  or non–universal Berezinsky:1995cj ; Berezinsky:1996ga ; noi\_sugra ; Arnowitt ; Nath ; Ellis:2002wv  Supergravity, where the relevant independent supersymmetric parameters are defined at a grand unification scale, to effective supersymmetric theories which are defined at the electroweak scale noi\_sugra ; noi\_mssm ; effMSSM . In the present paper we will mostly concentrate on the discussion of universal Supergravity and we will comment on the results which can be obtained in different supersymmetric schemes.

The essential elements of a generic minimal supersymmetric model are described by a Yang–Mills Lagrangian, by the superpotential, which contains all the Yukawa interactions between the standard and supersymmetric fields, and by the soft–breaking Lagrangian, which models the breaking of supersymmetry. Implementation of this model within a Supergravity scheme leads quite naturally to a set of unification conditions at a grand unification scale ($`M_{GUT}`$) for the parameters of the theory:

* Unification of the gaugino masses:

$$M_i(M_{GUT})m_{1/2},$$
(14)
* Universality of the scalar masses with a common mass denoted by $`m_0`$:

$$m_i(M_{GUT})m_0,$$
(15)
* Universality of the trilinear scalar couplings:

$$A^l(M_{GUT})=A^d(M_{GUT})=A^u(M_{GUT})A_0m_0.$$
(16)

We denote this scheme as universal SUGRA (or minimal SUGRA). The relevant parameters of the model at the electroweak scale are obtained from their corresponding values at the $`M_{GUT}`$ scale by running these down according to renormalization group equations. By requiring that the electroweak symmetry breaking is induced radiatively by the soft supersymmetry breaking, one finally reduces the parameters of the model to five: $`m_{1/2}`$, $`m_0`$, $`A_0`$, $`\mathrm{tan}\beta v_2/v_1`$ and $`\mathrm{sign}(\mu )`$, where $`v_1`$ and $`v_2`$ denote the vev’s of the two Higgs field of the model and $`\mu `$ is a mixing parameter between the two Higgs fields which enters in the superpotential. These parameters are a priori undetermined. However, bounds coming from supersymmetry and Higgs searches at accelerators and on supersymmetric contributions to rare process, like the $`bs+\gamma `$ radiative decay, introduce limits on the model parameter space. Also theoretical arguments concerning the naturalness of the theory may be used in order to identify typical scales beyond which the main attractive features of supersymmetry fade away. For instance, fine-tuning arguments may be invoked to set bounds on $`m_0`$ and $`m_{1/2}`$ Berezinsky:1995cj ; Berezinsky:1996ga : $`m_{1/2}<`$ hundreds of GeV, whereas $`m_0<(23)`$ TeV.

In the present paper we will vary the parameters of the minimal SUGRA scheme in wide ranges in order to carefully analyze the impact of the low reheating–temperature cosmology on relic neutralinos. The ranges we adopt are the following:

$`50\text{GeV}`$ $`m_{1/2}`$ $`3\text{TeV},`$ (17)
$`m_0`$ $`3\text{TeV},`$
$`3`$ $`A_0`$ $`+3,`$
$`1`$ $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ $`60.`$
The sign of $`\mu `$ is chosen to be positive, since negative values are somehow disfavoured by the limits on the supersymmetric contribution to the muon anomalous magnetic moment. On the configurations obtained by randomly scanning the above defined parameter space, we apply the experimental limits quoted above on Higgs and supersymmetry searches and on the $`bs+\gamma `$ decay (for details, see for instance Ref.details ; taup01 ).

We finally remark that the phenomenology of relic neutralinos, in some sectors of the minimal SUGRA scheme, is also quite sensitive to some Standard Model parameters, such as the top quark mass $`m_t`$, the bottom quark mass $`m_b`$ and the strong coupling $`\alpha _s`$ taup01 ; marinadelrey01 ; Ellis.HOW . For these parameters, we use here their 95% CL ranges: $`m_t^{\mathrm{pole}}=(175\pm 10)`$ GeV, $`m_b(M_Z)=(3.02\pm 0.21)`$ GeV and $`\alpha _s(M_Z)=0.118\pm 0.004`$.

## IV Results and Discussion

As already discussed in Sec.II, the calculation of the neutralino relic abundance $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\chi h^2`$, both in the standard case outlined in Sec.II.1 and in the low–reheating scenario described in Sec.II.2, relies on a detailed calculation of the neutralino self–annihilation cross section $`\sigma _{\mathrm{ann}}v`$. Here we consider the universal SUGRA model outlined in the previous Section, and calculate $`\sigma _{\mathrm{ann}}v`$ following the procedure given in Ref. Bottino:1993zx , to which we refer for details.

A first preliminary conclusion about neutralino dark matter and models with a low–reheating temperature may be drawn by calculating the neutralino annihilation cross section at the temperature $`T_{}`$. The quantity $`\sigma _{\mathrm{ann}}v_{}`$ is shown in Fig.1 as a function of $`m_\chi `$ in terms of a scatter plot obtained by varying the SUGRA parameters in the ranges given by Eq. (III). The scatter plot is compared to the values of the limiting cross section given in Eq. (11), calculated for different values of $`T_{RH}`$. This figure shows that the condition of non–relativistic non–equilibrium, given by Eq. (11), is verified only for values of $`T_{RH}`$ smaller than about 300 MeV. For larger values of the reheating temperature, $`\sigma _{\mathrm{ann}}v_{}`$ always lies above the curves of the limiting cross section. This fact implies that for $`T_{RH}>300`$ MeV the neutralino always reaches thermal equilibrium during the reheating phase, and therefore the peculiar behaviour $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\chi h^2\sigma _{\mathrm{ann}}v`$ is limited only to cosmological models with very low reheating temperatures. This conclusion is actually true for a class of supersymetric scenarios which is more general than the universal SUGRA model shown in Fig.1. For instance, we have explicitly verified that the same result also applies to other SUGRA schemes where the universality condition of Eq. (15) are relaxed at the GUT scale for the Higgs sector, when the supersymmetric parameters are varied in the same ranges discussed in the previous Section. One must notice that the effective lower limit on neutralino cross section revealed in Fig. 1 is a consequence of the choice of the upper ranges of Eq. (III) adopted for the dimensional supersymmetric parameters. However, we remind that the intervals given in Eq. (III) are representative of a typical upper bound on the supersymmetry breaking scale, $`M_{\mathrm{susy}}<\mathrm{a}\mathrm{few}\times 10^3`$ GeV. This constraint may be understood on quite general grounds, since it derives from naturalness arguments on the stability of the Higgs potential and the requirement of absence of fine–tuning in the generation of the electroweak scale through the mechanism of radiative symmetry breaking. Notice that, as far as $`m_{1/2}`$ is concerned, the upper value adopted in Eq. (III) is already large enough to pose questions about fine–tuning problems Berezinsky:1995cj ; Berezinsky:1996ga .

Let us turn now to the calculation of the neutralino relic abundance. Fig.2 shows $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\chi h^2`$ as a function of the neutralino mass $`m_\chi `$, calculated in universal SUGRA for $`\mathrm{tan}\beta =30`$ and $`A_0=0`$ and with $`m_0`$ and $`m_{1/2}`$ varied in the ranges of Eq. (III). Starting from the upper–left panel, we plot the results obtained for standard cosmology, and for low reheating–temperature cosmologies with $`T_{RH}=30`$, 20, 10, 5, 1 GeV. In the case of standard cosmology, the neutralino relic abundance turns out to be generically quite large, in excess of the upper bound on the total amount of matter in the Universe given in Eq. (2). This is a typical feature of universal SUGRA models for values of $`\mathrm{tan}\beta <40`$ Berezinsky:1995cj ; Berezinsky:1996ga ; noi\_sugra ; Ellis.HOW ; Ellis.FGO ; Ellis.more ; Feng ; Arnowitt ; Nath ; Roszkowski . For this schemes, the constraint on the parameter space coming from cosmology is actually very strong, especially in posing stringent upper limits on the neutralino mass. Fig. 2 shows that an upper bound of about 200 GeV is obtained on the neutralino mass when we restrict $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\chi h^2`$ to be less than 0.3.

There are, however, ways out to avoid such a bound. When coannihilation is included, the upper bound on $`m_\chi `$ in universal SUGRA at low/intermediate $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ can be extended up to about 500 GeV Ellis.HOW ; Ellis.FGO ; Arnowitt ; Roszkowski , even though this possibility is restricted to a very narrow sector of the SUGRA parameter space where the neutralino mass is almost degenerate with the stau mass.

Alternatively, when a low reheating temperature is allowed, Fig.2 shows that the upper limit on $`m_\chi `$ coming from cosmology is removed. By lowering the reheating temperature we affect mainly the relic abundance for large neutralino masses, unless we lower $`T_{RH}`$ below a few GeV: for $`T_{RH}<5`$ GeV, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\chi h^2`$ is reduced for all the allowed mass range of the SUGRA model.

The behaviour of the different panels of Fig.2 may be easily understood by comparing the relevant mass scales which enter in the calculation of the relic abundance in the standard and low reheating–temperature models, namely $`m_\chi `$, $`T_F`$ and $`T_{RH}`$. In Fig.3 we show a generic example of what happens at different neutralino masses for a sufficiently low reheating temperature. The upper panel of Fig.3 shows the relic abundance vs. $`m_\chi `$, calculated for $`\sigma _{\mathrm{ann}}v`$ fixed at the value $`10^{10}`$ GeV-2. The thick horizontal (black) line refers to the calculation for standard cosmology, while the thick decreasing (blue) line refers to $`T_{RH}=10`$ GeV. The two lines are superimposed for $`m_\chi <150`$ GeV. The lower panel shows the value of the freeze–out temperature $`T_F`$ as a function of the neutralino mass. The horizontal line indicates the values of $`T_{RH}=10`$ GeV. By comparing the upper an lower panels, we see that as long as the freeze–out occurs at a temperature which is (much) smaller than $`T_{RH}`$, no difference is present for the low reheating–temperature scenario as compared to the standard case. On the contrary, when $`T_F`$ approaches $`T_{RH}`$, the relic abundance becomes suppressed, and this effect becomes more pronounced as $`T_F`$ grows as compared to $`T_{RH}`$. Since $`T_F`$ is an increasing function of the neutralino mass, a low–reheating scenario affects more the large mass sector of the theory, and this explains the peculiar behaviour of Fig. 2.

Going back to the discussion of the features of Fig. 2, we see that in order to have heavy neutralinos compatible with the cosmological upper bound in Eq. (2), the reheating temperature has to be lowered below about 30 GeV. When $`T_{RH}`$ falls below 20 GeV all the neutralino mass range is acceptable from the point of view of cosmology, although a fraction of the SUGRA configurations entail relic neutralinos which are a subdominant dark matter component, since $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\chi h^2`$ falls below the lower limit of Eq. (2). When $`T_{RH}<0.6`$ GeV all the SUGRA configurations lead to subdominant relic neutralinos. For smaller values of $`T_{RH}`$ the neutralino relic abundance is even more suppressed and becomes negligible for $`T_{RH}`$ in the MeV range.

We comment at this point that for larger values of $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ ($`\mathrm{tan}\beta >40`$) in SUGRA models an upper limit on the neutralino mass is not present even in standard cosmology. The occurrence of an acceptable relic abundance is generically confined to corridors in the parameter space where either the relic abundance is suppressed by coannihilation or the neutralino mass lies close to the pole of the annihilation cross section mediated by the pseudoscalar higgs field $`A`$. In a low reheating–temperature cosmology, these features are relaxed and conclusions similar to those discussed above in connection with Fig.2 are present. In particular, a scale of about 1 GeV as a lower limit on $`T_{RH}`$ in order to have dominant relic neutralinos is present for all the values of $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ given in Eq. (III).

New features in the parameter space are also present when the universality is not extended to Higgs masses Berezinsky:1995cj ; Berezinsky:1996ga ; Arnowitt ; Ellis:2002wv . Effects of non–universality modify the low–energy sector of the theory, through the RGE evolution and the conditions of radiative electroweak symmetry breaking: this alters the neutralino couplings and the mass spectrum of sparticles and induces variations of the neutralino annihilation cross section. The consequence is a change and an extension of the regions of parameter space which are compatible with a relic neutralino, also in standard cosmology. A low reheating temperature has again the effect of enlarging these cosmologically relevant sectors of the parameter space. A lower limit of about 1 GeV on $`T_{RH}`$ in order to have dominant relic neutralinos is again recovered also in non–universal SUGRA models.

Fig. 4 shows the same information contained in Fig. 2, expressed in the plane $`m_0`$$`m_{1/2}`$. The upper–left panel refers to standard cosmology, the other panels refer to low reheating–temperature cosmologies with $`T_{RH}=30`$, 20, 10, 5, 1 GeV. The value of $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ is fixed at 30 and $`A_0=0`$. The light-shaded (yellow) regions are excluded domains: the ones on the left side of the $`m_0`$$`m_{1/2}`$ plane are excluded by the experimental bound discussed in the previous Section or by the non–occurrence of radiative electroweak symmetry breaking, while the ones on the lower part of the plane do not correspond to viable LSP neutralino models. The dark–shaded (blue) areas correspond to the domains where the neutralino relic abundance falls inside the cosmologically relevant range of Eq. (2). The hatched (red) regions correspond to neutralinos with a subdominant relic abundance, i.e. to $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\chi h^2<0.05`$.

The first panel shows that for standard cosmology the region of the $`m_0`$$`m_{1/2}`$ parameter space which is allowed by cosmology is quite restricted, as discussed above. The upper limit on the acceptable values of the neutralino relic abundance poses severe bounds on both $`m_0`$ and $`m_{1/2}`$, of the order of a few hundreds of GeV. When coannihilation is included Ellis.HOW ; Ellis.FGO ; Arnowitt ; Nath ; Roszkowski , the allowed regions is extended in a thin band close to the lower excluded area. However, as is evident from the other panels, when the reheating temperature is lowered the consequent suppression on $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\chi h^2`$ weakens considerably the constraints on $`m_0`$ and $`m_{1/2}`$. In particular, the regions of the SUGRA parameter space which are compatible with the assumption of a dominant neutralino dark matter change significantly, depending on the actual value of $`T_{RH}`$. For values of $`T_{RH}`$ below about 20 GeV a large fraction of the parameter space is allowed by cosmology and for $`T_{RH}<1`$ GeV all the supersymmetric parameter space is compatible with the cosmological abundance of relic neutralinos, even though for most of the values of the parameters the relic abundance falls below the interval of Eq. (2).

As we have discussed before, the extension of the cosmologically allowed regions in the plane $`m_0`$$`m_{1/2}`$ is enlarged, in standard cosmology, when $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ is larger than about 40, since in this case coannihilation or annihilation through the $`A`$–pole is effective in reducing the values of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\chi h^2`$. In the latter case, an almost diagonal allowed band opens up marinadelrey01 ; Ellis.HOW . Larger regions are also allowed in non–universal SUGRA models. In both cases, a low reheating temperature has again the effect of widely enlarging the cosmologically relevant domains in the plane $`m_0`$$`m_{1/2}`$. We obtain, also for the SUGRA models with $`\mathrm{tan}\beta >40`$ and for the non–universal SUGRA schemes, that in all the supersymmetric parameter space the neutralino relic abundance is compatible with the range of Eq. (2) when $`T_{RH}<1`$ GeV.

In the above discussion, we noticed that, for any given neutralino mass, low enough values of $`T_{RH}`$ would imply a suppression of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\chi h^2`$ too strong to be compatible with the hypothesis of dominant neutralino dark matter. We can therefore use this argument to obtain a lower limit on $`T_{RH}`$ under the assumption that the neutralino represents the dominant component of dark matter in the Universe. This lower bound on $`T_{RH}`$ is shown as a solid line in Fig.5, as a function of $`m_\chi `$. To derive this limit we have varied all the SUGRA parameters in the intervals of Eq. (III). The result plotted in Fig. 5 shows that if we require the neutralino to be the dominant dark matter component, the reheating temperature in the early Universe cannot be lower than a value ranging from 0.6 GeV up to about 20 GeV, depending on the value of the neutralino mass. This bound on $`T_{RH}`$ at the GeV scale is quite interesting, since it is sizably stronger than the constraint given by nucleosynthesis. We have verified that the same result remains valid also for non–universal SUGRA models. Therefore a lower limit of about 1 GeV on $`T_{RH}`$, in order to explain the dark matter content of the Universe in terms of relic neutralinos, is a specific feature of supergravity models.

## V Conclusions

In standard cosmology it is usually assumed that the temperature $`T_{RH}`$ of the Universe at the beginning of the radiation–dominated era is much higher than the supersymmetry breaking scale. Moreover, neutralinos decouple from the thermal bath after the reheating phase, which followed the end of inflation, has terminated. Under these assumptions, the allowed parameter space of SUGRA models turns out to be severely constrained by the requirement that the neutralino relic density does not exceed the maximal value of the matter density of the Universe deduced from observations.

In this paper we have performed a quantitative study of the neutralino relic abundance in cosmological scenarios with a low reheating temperature Giudice:2000ex . This is a viable possibility since the only robust lower bound on the reheating temperature $`T_{RH}`$ can be set at the MeV scale, in order not to spoil nucleosynthesis predictions. The suppression on $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\chi h^2`$ is originated by the fact that neutralinos decouple from the thermal bath before the end of the reheating phase. In this case the neutralino number density is diluted by entropy production and by a higher expansion rate than in the radiation–dominated era.

For values of $`T_{RH}<30`$ GeV the domains of the SUGRA parameter space which are compatible with dominant relic neutralinos are largely enhanced with respect to the standard cosmological case. These domains depend on $`T_{RH}`$ and we have shown their evolution as a function of the reheating temperature. For $`T_{RH}<1`$ GeV all the SUGRA parameter space becomes compatible with the bounds on the dark matter relic abundance (even though the neutralino relic abundance for these low values of $`T_{RH}`$ is strongly suppressed).

Since lower $`T_{RH}`$ imply smaller relic densities, the assumption that neutralinos provide a major contribution to the dark matter of the Universe implies a lower limit on $`T_{RH}`$. This constraint ranges from 0.6 GeV for neutralino masses of the order of few tens of GeV, up to 20 GeV for neutralino masses in the TeV range. This bound on $`T_{RH}`$, subject to the request of explaining the dark matter content of the Universe only in terms of relic neutralinos in SUGRA schemes, is much stronger than the limit on $`T_{RH}`$ coming from nucleosynthesis. Similar conclusions occur also for non–universal SUGRA models.

###### Acknowledgements.

We wish to thank G.F. Giudice for useful discussions.