Messenger sneutrinos as cold dark matter

Zn models where supersymmetry breaking is communicated into the visible sector via gauge interactions the lightest supersymmetric particle is typically the gravitino which is too light to account for cold dark matter. We point out that the lightest messenger sneutrinos with mass in the range of one to three TeV may serve as cold dark matter over most of the parameter space due to one-loop electroweak radiative corrections. However, in the minimal model this mass range has been excluded by the direct dark matter searches. We propose a solution to this problem by introducing terms that explicitly violate the messenger number. This results in low detection rate for both direct and indirect searches and allows messenger sneutrinos to be a valid dark matter candidate in a wide region of SUSY parameter space. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.