Supersymmetric Seesaw Inflation

TL;DR

This paper proposes a supersymmetric inflation model based on a Type I seesaw mechanism, linking inflationary parameters to neutrino masses, with a focus on stability, reheating, and leptogenesis within a GUT framework.

Contribution

It introduces a novel inflection point inflation scenario in supersymmetric theories with a Type I seesaw, emphasizing superpotential couplings and stability against soft SUSY breaking.

Findings

Inflation scale linked to right-handed neutrino mass $10^6$-$10^{12}$ GeV.

Reheating via instant preheating achieves high reheat temperatures.

Model consistent with realistic SO(10) GUT fits.

Abstract

Supersymmetric Unified theories which incorporate a renormalizable Type I seesaw mechanism for small neutrino masses can also provide slow roll inflection point inflation along a flat direction associated with a gauge invariant combination of the Higgs, slepton and right handed sneutrino superfields. Inflationary parameters are related to the Majorana and Dirac couplings responsible for neutrino masses with the scale of inflation set by a right-handed neutrino mass $M_{\nu^c} \sim 10^6-10^{12}$ GeV. Tuning of the neutrino Dirac and Majorana superpotential couplings and soft Susy breaking parameters is required to enforce flatness of the inflationary potential. In contrast to previous inflection point inflation models the cubic term is dominantly derived from superpotential couplings rather than soft A-terms. Thus since $M_{\nu^c}>>M_{Susy}$ the tuning condition is almost independent of the soft supersymmetry breaking parameters and therefore more stable. The required fine tuning is also less stringent than for Minimal SUSY Standard Model (MSSM) inflation or Dirac neutrino 'A-term" inflation scenarios due to the much larger value of the inflaton mass. Reheating proceeds via `instant preheating' which rapidly dumps all the inflaton energy into a MSSM mode radiation bath giving a high reheat temperature $T_{rh} \approx M_{\nu^c}^{3/4}\, 10^{6}$ GeV $\sim 10^{11}- 10^{15} $ GeV. Thus our scenario requires large gravitino mass $> 50 $ TeV to avoid a gravitino problem. The `instant preheating' and Higgs component of the inflaton also imply a `non-thermal' contribution to Leptogenesis due to facilitated production of right handed neutrinos during inflaton decay. We derive the tuning conditions for the scenario to work in the realistic New Minimal Supersymmetric SO(10) GUT and show that they can be satisfied by realistic fits.