Inflation, de Sitter landscape and super-Higgs effect

Abstract

We continue developing cosmological models involving nilpotent chiral superfields, which provide a simple unified description of inflation and the current acceleration of the universe in the supergravity context. We describe here a general class of models with a positive cosmological constant at the minimum of the potential, such that supersymmetry is spontaneously broken in the direction of the nilpotent superfield S. In the unitary gauge, these models have a simple action where all highly non-linear fermionic terms of the classical Volkov-Akulov action disappear. We present masses for bosons and fermions in these theories. By a proper choice of parameters in this class of models, one can fit any possible set of the inflationary parameters n s and r, a broad range of values of the vacuum energy V 0 , which plays the role of the dark energy, and achieve a controllable level of supersymmetry breaking. This can be done without introducing light moduli, such as Polonyi fields, which often lead to cosmological problems in phenomenological supergravity.

D 3 ¯ $$ \overline{\mathrm{D}3} $$ and dS

“…(36) of [43], see also [48]. In particular, up to an overall factor, we find that the first line in equation (36) in [43] is for a = 1, b = 0, i.e. in the θ 2 = 0 gauge, the same as (3.17) with IASD flux instead of the ISD flux.…”

“…inflationary models have a spontaneously broken supersymmetry of the VA type at the minimum of the potential were developed in [34][35][36].…”

D 3 ¯ $$ \overline{D3} $$ induced geometric inflation

“…This nilpotent superfield allows for a manifestly supersymmetric description of the uplift to a de Sitter minimum [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23]. In a parallel development, it has been realized that nilpotent superfields have great potential as a model building tool in effective supergravity theories of inflation [24][25][26][27][28]. The nilpotent multiplet helps to achieve stability of inflationary trajectory, making the non-inflaton fields of the theory heavy.…”

Constrained superfields in supergravity

“…While in the case of global supersymmetry there is a good understanding of many different constraints [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12], there is still no general analysis available for constrained superfields in supergravity theories [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31]. With this work we aim at filling this gap, by analyzing known consistent globally supersymmetric constraints within the supergravity framework, providing their solutions and discussing the corresponding supergravity actions in superfield formalism.…”