GRAVITINO PRODUCTION IN THE INFLATIONARY UNIVERSE AND THE EFFECTS ON BIG-BANG NUCLEOSYNTHESIS

Gravitino production and decay in the inflationary universe are reexamined. Assuming that the gravitino mainly decays into a photon and a photino, we calculate the upperbound on the reheating temperature. Compared to previous works, we have essentially improved the following two points: (i) the helicity +/-(3/2) gravitino production cross sections are calculated by using the full relevant terms in the supergravity lagrangian, and (ii) the high energy photon spectrum is obtained by solving the Boltzmann equations numerically. Photo-dissociation of the light elements (D, T, He-3, He-4) leads to the most stringent upperbound on the reheating temperature, which is given by (10(6)-10(9)) GeV for the gravitino mass 100 GeV-1 TeV. On the other hand, requiring that the present mass density of photino should be smaller than the critical density, we find that the reheating temperature have to be smaller than (10(11)-10(12)) GeV for the photino mass (10-100) GeV, irrespectively of the gravitino mass. The effect of other decay channels is also considered.