Photinos from cosmic sources | Nature

In supersymmetric (SUSY) theories1, the photino is the fermion partner of the photon and is expected to be the lightest stable particle. Despite many discussions of the possible production

of photinos, and other supersymmetric particles, at existing and proposed accelerators2, so far, experiments have only set limits3,4. We propose here that photinos are produced by sources of

ultra-high-energy cosmic rays. We specifically consider Cygnus X-3, which is a powerful source of neutral particles up to 104 TeV (refs 5–8). These are usually assumed to be γ rays, but

there is no direct evidence for this, and shower5,6 and underground9,10 experiments suggest that there may be another component present. Here we estimate that a photino flux of the order of

10−14 cm−2 s−1 above 10 TeV is possible from a source such as Cyg X-3, under certain conditions, and consider the feasibility of detecting these photinos.

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