The Supersymmetric Effective Field Theory of Inflation

TL;DR

This paper develops a comprehensive supersymmetric effective field theory for inflation, incorporating the graviton, gravitino, Goldstone, and Goldstino fields, and explores their phenomenological implications for primordial fluctuations.

Contribution

It constructs the most general supersymmetric inflationary Lagrangian with spontaneous SUSY breaking, including a complete multiplet and decoupling regimes, advancing theoretical understanding.

Findings

Goldstino can have a non-relativistic dispersion relation.

Loop effects of Goldstino and gravitino influence primordial non-Gaussianities.

Potentially large non-Gaussian signals with f_NL of order 1 or greater.

Abstract

We construct the Supersymmetric Effective Field Theory of Inflation, that is the most general theory of inflationary fluctuations when time-translations and supersymmetry are spontaneously broken. The non-linear realization of these invariances allows us to define a complete SUGRA multiplet containing the graviton, the gravitino, the Goldstone of time translations and the Goldstino, with no auxiliary fields. Going to a unitary gauge where only the graviton and the gravitino are present, we write the most general Lagrangian built out of the fluctuations of these fields, invariant under time-dependent spatial diffeomorphisms, but softly-breaking time diffeomorphisms and gauged SUSY. With a suitable St\"uckelberg transformation, we introduce the Goldstone boson of time translation and the Goldstino of SUSY. No additional dynamical light field is needed. In the high energy limit, larger than the inflationary Hubble scale for the Goldstino, these fields decouple from the graviton and the gravitino, greatly simplifying the analysis in this regime. We study the phenomenology of this Lagrangian. The Goldstino can have a non-relativistic dispersion relation. Gravitino and Goldstino affect the primordial curvature perturbations at loop level. The UV modes running in the loops generate three-point functions which are degenerate with the ones coming from operators already present in the absence of supersymmetry. Their size is potentially as large as corresponding to $f_{\rm NL}^{\rm equil.,\,orthog.}\sim 1$ or, for particular operators, even $\gg 1$. The non-degenerate contribution from modes of order $H$ is estimated to be very small.