Natural Supergravity Inflation

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that a simple supergravity model with a single chiral superfield and specific Kahler potentials can naturally produce inflation driven by quantum corrections, matching cosmological observations.

Contribution

It introduces a minimal supergravity inflation model where quantum effects generate the necessary -term for inflation, with higher-order terms being naturally suppressed.

Findings

The model achieves sufficient perturbation amplitude.

Reheating is naturally incorporated.

Higher order  terms do not destabilize inflation.

Abstract

We show that a single uncharged chiral superfield, canonically coupled to \mbox{$N=1$} supergravity with vanishing superpotential, naturally drives inflation in the early universe for a class of simple Kahler potentials. Inflation occurs due to the one-loop generation of a Kahler anomaly proportional to $\R^2$. The coefficient of this $\R^2$ term is of the correct magnitude to describe all aspects of an inflationary cosmology, including sufficient amplitude perturbations and reheating. Higher order terms proportional to $\R^n$ for $n \geq 3$ are naturally suppressed relative to the $\R^2$ term and, hence, do not destabilize the theory.