Paper detail

Impact of SUSY-QCD corrections on neutralino-stop co-annihilation and the neutralino relic density

We have calculated the full O(alpha_s) supersymmetric QCD corrections to neutralino-stop co-annihilation into electroweak vector and Higgs bosons within the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM). We performed a parameter study within the phenomenological MSSM and demonstrated that the studied co-annihilation processes are phenomenologically relevant, especially in the context of a 126 GeV Higgs-like particle. By means of an example scenario we discuss the effect of the full next-to-leading order corrections on the co-annihilation cross section and show their impact on the predicted neutralino relic density. We demonstrate that the impact of these corrections on the cosmologically preferred region of parameter space is larger than the current experimental uncertainty of WMAP data.