Natural Inflation and Low Energy Supersymmetry

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that natural (axionic) inflation can be compatible with low-energy supersymmetry by utilizing two axions from string theory moduli, reconciling high-scale inflation with TeV-scale supersymmetry.

Contribution

It introduces a mechanism involving two axions from string theory to reconcile high-scale natural inflation with low-energy supersymmetry.

Findings

Natural inflation predicts sizeable primordial tensor modes.

Low-scale supersymmetry can coexist with high-scale inflation.

Two axions from string moduli enable this compatibility.

Abstract

Natural (axionic) inflation provides a well-motivated and predictive scheme for the description of the early universe. It leads to sizeable primordial tensor modes and thus a high mass scale of the inflationary potential. Naively this seems to be at odds with low (TeV) scale supersymmetry, especially when embedded in superstring theory. We show that low scale supersymmetry is compatible with natural (high scale) inflation. The mechanism requires the presence of two axions that are provided through the moduli of string theory.