Gravitino dark matter and the flavour structure of R-violating operators

Abstract

We study gravitino dark matter and slow gravitino decays within the framework of R-violating supersymmetry, with particular emphasis on the flavour dependence of the branching ratios and the allowed R-violating couplings. The dominant decay modes and final state products turn out to be very sensitive to the R-violating hierarchies. Mixing effects can be crucial in correctly deriving the relative magnitude of the various contributions, particularly for heavy flavours with phase space suppression. The study of the strength of different decay rates for the gravitino is also correlated to collider signatures expected from decays of the Next-to-Lightest Supersymmetric Particle (NLSP) and to single superparticle production.