Clemens Wieck

Challenges for large-field inflation and moduli stabilization

A bstractWe analyze the interplay between Kähler moduli stabilization and chaotic inflation in supergravity. While heavy moduli decouple from inflation in the supersymmetric limit, supersymmetry breaking generically introduces non-decoupling effects. These lead to inflation driven by a soft mass term, mφ2u2009∼u2009mm3/2, where m is a supersymmetric mass parameter. This scenario needs no stabilizer field, but the stability of moduli during inflation imposes a large supersymmetry breaking scale, m3/2 ≫ H, and a careful choice of initial conditions. This is illustrated in three prominent examples of moduli stabilization: KKLT stabilization, Kähler Uplifting, and the Large Volume Scenario. Remarkably, all models have a universal effective inflaton potential which is flattened compared to quadratic inflation. Hence, they share universal predictions for the CMB observables, in particular a lower bound on the tensor-to-scalar ratio, r ≳ 0.05.

Large-Field Inflation and Supersymmetry Breaking

A bstractLarge-field inflation is an interesting and predictive scenario. Its non-trivial embedding in supergravity was intensively studied in the recent literature, whereas its interplay with supersymmetry breaking has been less thoroughly investigated. We consider the minimal viable model of chaotic inflation in supergravity containing a stabilizer field, and add a Polonyi field. Furthermore, we study two possible extensions of the minimal setup. We show that there are various constraints: first of all, it is very hard to couple an O’Raifeartaigh sector with the inflaton sector, the simplest viable option being to couple them only through gravity. Second, even in the simplest model the gravitino mass is bounded from above parametrically by the inflaton mass. Therefore, high-scale supersymmetry breaking is hard to implement in a chaotic inflation setup. As a separate comment we analyze the simplest chaotic inflation construction without a stabilizer field, together with a supersymmetrically stabilized Kähler modulus. Without a modulus, the potential of such a model is unbounded from below. We show that a heavy modulus cannot solve this problem.

Supersymmetric moduli stabilization and high-scale inflation

Abstract We study the back-reaction of moduli fields on the inflaton potential in generic models of F-term inflation. We derive the moduli corrections as a power series in the ratio of Hubble scale and modulus mass. The general result is illustrated with two examples, hybrid inflation and chaotic inflation. We find that in both cases the decoupling of moduli dynamics and inflation requires moduli masses close to the scale of grand unification. For smaller moduli masses the CMB observables are strongly affected.

Moduli backreaction and supersymmetry breaking in string-inspired inflation models

A bstractWe emphasize the importance of effects from heavy fields on supergravity models of inflation. We study, in particular, the backreaction of stabilizer fields and geometric moduli in the presence of supersymmetry breaking. Many effects do not decouple even if those fields are much heavier than the inflaton field. We apply our results to successful models of Starobinsky-like inflation and natural inflation. In most scenarios producing a plateau potential it proves difficult to retain the flatness of the potential after backreactions are taken into account. Some of them are incompatible with non-perturbative moduli stabilization. In natural inflation there exist a number of models which are not constrained by backreactions at all. In those cases the correction terms from heavy fields have the same inflaton-dependence as the uncorrected potential, so that inflation may be possible even for very large gravitino masses.

Inflation with Fayet-Iliopoulos terms

Two of the most attractive realizations of inflation in supergravity are based upon the presence of a constant Fayet-Iliopoulos (FI) term. In D-term hybrid inflation it is the FI term itself which sets the energy scale of inflation. Alternatively, the breaking of a U(1) symmetry induced by the FI term can dynamically generate the quadratic potential of chaotic inflation. The purpose of this note is to study the possible UV embedding of these schemes in terms of the `field-dependent FI term related to a string modulus field which is stabilized by a non-perturbative superpotential. We find that in settings where the FI term drives inflation, gauge invariance prevents a decoupling of the modulus from the inflationary dynamics. The resulting inflation models generically contain additional dynamical degrees of freedom compared to D-term hybrid inflation. However, the dynamical realization of chaotic inflation can be obtained in complete analogy to the case of a constant FI term. We present a simple string-inspired toy model of this type.

Non-Universal Anomalies in Heterotic String Constructions

We investigate anomalies on heterotic orbifolds and their blowups. We give a simple example of an orbifold blowup which contains anomalous U(1) symmetries that are canceled by axions which couple non-universally to the different gauge groups, thus clarifying some confusion which recently arose in the literature concerning anomaly universality. We argue that non-universal axionic couplings are the general case, and that the couplings are only universal in the case of orbifolds. We comment on the consequences of this non-universality for discrete R symmetries. We furthermore investigate the origin of discrete (R and non-R) symmetries on smooth Calabi-Yau manifolds.

UV corrections in sgoldstino-less inflation

We study the embedding of inflation with nilpotent multiplets in supergravity, in particular the decoupling of the sgoldstino scalar field. Instead of being imposed by hand, the nilpotency constraint on the goldstino multiplet arises in the low energy-effective theory by integrating out heavy degrees of freedom. We present explicit supergravity models in which a large but finite sgoldstino mass arises from Yukawa or gauge interactions. In both cases the inflaton potential receives two types of corrections. One is from the backreaction of the sgoldstino, the other from the heavy fields generating its mass. We show that these scale oppositely with the Volkov–Akulov cut-off scale, which makes a consistent decoupling of the sgoldstino nontrivial. Still, we identify a parameter window in which sgoldstino-less inflation can take place, up to corrections which flatten the inflaton potential.

The DBI action, higher-derivative supergravity, and flattening inflaton potentials

A bstractIn string theory compactifications it is common to find an effective Lagrangian for the scalar fields with a non-canonical kinetic term. We study the effective action of the scalar position moduli of Type II Dp-branes. In many instances the kinetic terms are in fact modified by a term proportional to the scalar potential itself. This can be linked to the appearance of higher-dimensional supersymmetric operators correcting the Kähler potential. We identify the supersymmetric dimension-eight operators describing the α′ corrections captured by the D-brane Dirac-Born-Infeld action. Our analysis then allows an embedding of the D-brane moduli effective action into an N=1

Higgs-otic Inflation and Moduli Stabilization

mathcal{N}=1