Large-Field Inflation and Supersymmetry Breaking

TL;DR

This paper explores the challenges of embedding large-field chaotic inflation within supergravity frameworks, especially when considering supersymmetry breaking, and finds significant constraints on model coupling and supersymmetry scales.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the constraints and limitations in coupling inflation models with supersymmetry breaking sectors in supergravity.

Findings

Coupling inflaton and supersymmetry breaking sectors is difficult, often limited to gravitational interactions.

Gravitino mass is constrained to be below the inflaton mass, limiting high-scale supersymmetry breaking.

Models without a stabilizer field face potential unboundedness, which cannot be fixed by a heavy modulus.

Abstract

Large-field inflation is an interesting and predictive scenario. Its non-trivial embedding in supergravity was intensively studied in the recent literature, whereas its interplay with supersymmetry breaking has been less thoroughly investigated. We consider the minimal viable model of chaotic inflation in supergravity containing a stabilizer field, and add a Polonyi field. Furthermore, we study two possible extensions of the minimal setup. We show that there are various constraints: first of all, it is very hard to couple an O'Raifeartaigh sector with the inflaton sector, the simplest viable option being to couple them only through gravity. Second, even in the simplest model the gravitino mass is bounded from above parametrically by the inflaton mass. Therefore, high-scale supersymmetry breaking is hard to implement in a chaotic inflation setup. As a separate comment we analyze the simplest chaotic inflation construction without a stabilizer field, together with a supersymmetrically stabilized Kahler modulus. Without a modulus, the potential of such a model is unbounded from below. We show that a heavy modulus cannot solve this problem.