Inflation with Non-minimal Gravitational Couplings and Supergravity

TL;DR

This paper investigates how Higgs fields with non-minimal gravitational couplings can drive inflation within supergravity frameworks, highlighting the necessity of extending the MSSM to include a singlet for successful inflation.

Contribution

It demonstrates that non-minimal Higgs inflation is incompatible with MSSM but feasible with NMSSM or similar extensions, identifying the Higgs doublet as the inflaton.

Findings

Non-minimal Higgs coupling incompatible with MSSM

Adding a singlet enables slow-roll inflation

Inflaton located in the Higgs doublet sector

Abstract

We explore in the supergravity context the possibility that a Higgs scalar may drive inflation via a non-minimal coupling to gravity characterised by a large dimensionless coupling constant. We find that this scenario is not compatible with the MSSM, but that adding a singlet field (NMSSM, or a variant thereof) can very naturally give rise to slow-roll inflation. The inflaton is necessarily contained in the doublet Higgs sector and occurs in the D-flat direction of the two Higgs doublets.