Hybrid inflation with moduli stabilization and low scale supersymmetry breaking

TL;DR

This paper explores a supergravity hybrid inflation model incorporating a modulus field, demonstrating that low scale supersymmetry breaking can coexist with high scale inflation without significant interference, thanks to a shift symmetry that solves the eta-problem.

Contribution

It introduces a supergravity hybrid inflation model with moduli stabilization that maintains inflation dynamics and solves the eta-problem via shift symmetry, enabling low scale supersymmetry breaking.

Findings

Inflation remains unaffected by moduli stabilization.

The eta-problem is solved by shift symmetry.

Low scale supersymmetry breaking is compatible with high scale inflation.

Abstract

We study the supergravity hybrid inflation model of Ref.[1] in the presence of a modulus field. The eta-problem is solved by a shift symmetry for the inflaton, which protects the inflaton mass even in the presence of the modulus field. Inflation is (nearly) unaffected by moduli stabilization, provided the scale of supersymmetry breaking in the post-inflation vacuum is small. Therefore the model has the nice phenomenology that it combines low scale supersymmetry breaking with high scale (grand unification scale) inflation.