Primordial black holes from Volkov-Akulov-Starobinsky supergravity

TL;DR

This paper explores how a specific supergravity model can produce primordial black holes during inflation, aligning with current cosmological observations and resulting in supersymmetry breaking after inflation.

Contribution

It introduces a supergravity framework with a no-scale Kähler potential and polynomial superpotential that naturally generates ultra-slow-roll inflation and primordial black holes.

Findings

Model can produce PBH consistent with dark matter

Inflationary parameters match CMB constraints

Supersymmetry breaks after inflation at the inflationary scale

Abstract

We study the formation of primordial black holes (PBH) in the Starobinsky supergravity coupled to the nilpotent superfield describing Volkov-Akulov goldstino. By using the no-scale K\"ahler potential and a polynomial superpotential, we find that under certain conditions our model can describe effectively single-field inflation with the ultra-slow-roll phase that appears near a critical (nearly-inflection) point of the scalar potential. This can lead to the formation of PBH as part of (or whole) dark matter, while keeping the inflationary spectral tilt and the tensor-to-scalar ratio in good agreement with the current cosmic microwave background (CMB) bounds. After inflation, supersymmetry is spontaneously broken at the inflationary scale with the vanishing cosmological constant.