Inflation in string theory: a graceful exit to the real world

TL;DR

This paper presents the first closed string inflation model that successfully explains cosmic microwave background anisotropies and achieves reheating of Standard Model particles before the electroweak scale.

Contribution

It introduces a novel closed string inflation model with computable couplings to various sectors, enabling a graceful exit and reheating of Standard Model fields.

Findings

Inflation can produce observed CMB anisotropies.

Reheating occurs before the electroweak scale.

Couplings to Standard Model fields are explicitly computed.

Abstract

The most important criteria for a successful inflation are to explain the observed temperature anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background radiation, and exiting inflation in a vacuum where it can excite the Standard Model quarks and leptons required for the success of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. In this paper we provide the first ever closed string model of inflation where the inflaton couplings to hidden sector, moduli sector, and visible sector fields can be computed, showing that inflation can lead to reheating the Standard Model degrees of freedom before the electro-weak scale.