Axinos as dark matter

Supersymmetric extensions of the Standard Model that incorporate the axion solution to the strong CP problem necessarily contain also the axino, the fermionic partner of the axion. In contrast to the neutralino and the gravitino, the axino mass is generically not of the order of the supersymmetry-breaking scale and can be much smaller. The axino is therefore an intriguing candidate for a stable superpartner. In a previous letter [1] it was shown that axinos are a natural candidate for cold dark matter in the Universe when they are generated non-thermally through out-of-equilibrium neutralino decays. Here, we extend the study of non-thermal production and include a competing thermal production mechanism through scatterings and decays of particles in the plasma. We identify axino masses in the range of tens of MeV to several GeV (depending on the scenario) as corresponding to cold axino relics if the reheating temperature T-R is less than about 5 x 10(4) GeV. At higher T-R and lower mass, axinos could constitute warm dark matter. In the scenario with axinos as relics, the gravitino problem finds a natural solution. The lightest superpartner of the Standard Model spectrum remains effectively stable in high-energy detectors but may be either neutral or charged. The usual highly restrictive constraint Omega chih(2) less than or similar to 1 on the relic abundance of the lightest neutralino becomes void.