Catastrophic production of slow gravitinos

Simple item page
dc.citation.articleNumber075015en_US
dc.citation.issueNumber7en_US
dc.citation.journalTitlePhysical Review Den_US
dc.citation.volumeNumber104en_US
dc.contributor.authorKolb, Edward W.en_US
dc.contributor.authorLong, Andrew J.en_US
dc.contributor.authorMcDonough, Evanen_US
dc.date.accessioned2021-11-11T19:30:23Zen_US
dc.date.available2021-11-11T19:30:23Zen_US
dc.date.issued2021en_US
dc.description.abstractWe study gravitational particle production of the massive spin-3/2 Rarita-Schwinger field, and its close relative, the gravitino, in Friedmann-Robertson-Walker cosmological spacetimes. For masses lighter than the value of the Hubble expansion rate after inflation, m3/2≲H, we find catastrophic gravitational particle production, wherein the number of gravitationally produced particles is divergent, caused by a transient vanishing of the helicity-1/2 gravitino sound speed. In contrast with the conventional gravitino problem, the spectrum of produced particles is dominated by those with momentum at the UV cutoff. This suggests a breakdown of effective field theory, which might be cured by new degrees of freedom that emerge in the UV. We study the UV completion of the Rarita-Schwinger field, namely N=1, d=4, supergravity. We reproduce known results for models with a single superfield and models with an arbitrary number of chiral superfields, find a simple geometric expression for the sound speed in the latter case, and extend this to include nilpotent constrained superfields and orthogonal constrained superfields. We find supergravity models where the catastrophe is cured and models where it persists. Insofar as quantizing the gravitino is tantamount to quantizing gravity, as is the case in any UV completion of supergravity, the models exhibiting catastrophic production are prime examples of four-dimensional effective field theories that become inconsistent when gravity is quantized, suggesting a possible link to the swampland program. We propose the gravitino swampland conjecture, which is consistent with and indeed follows from the Kachru-Kallosh-Linde-Trivedi and large volume scenarios for moduli stabilization in string theory.en_US
dc.identifier.citationKolb, Edward W., Long, Andrew J. and McDonough, Evan. "Catastrophic production of slow gravitinos." <i>Physical Review D,</i> 104, no. 7 (2021) American Physical Society: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.104.075015.en_US
dc.identifier.digitalPhysRevD-104-075015en_US
dc.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.104.075015en_US
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1911/111650en_US
dc.language.isoengen_US
dc.publisherAmerican Physical Societyen_US
dc.rightsPublished by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.en_US
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/en_US
dc.titleCatastrophic production of slow gravitinosen_US
dc.typeJournal articleen_US
dc.type.dcmiTexten_US
dc.type.publicationpublisher versionen_US
Files
Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Thumbnail Image
Name:
PhysRevD-104-075015.pdf
Size:
677.63 KB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Download
Collections
Faculty Publications
Physics and Astronomy Publications