Speaker
Mrs
Anna Kaminska
(Institute of Theoretical Physics, University of Warsaw)
Description
In order to properly describe inflation and particle production one has to consider the underlying theory of particles and interactions. Supersymmetry is one of the most promising extensions of the Standard Model (SM). One of the typical features of supersymmetric extensions of the SM is the presence of flat directions - directions in field space, along which the scalar potential identically vanishes in the limit of unbroken global supersymmetry. Due to large quantum fluctuations or the classical evolution of fields during inflation flat directions can easily acquire large vacuum expectation values (VEVs). Therefore, there is a natural question about the role of such large VEVs in the process of particle production. It was postulated in literature that large flat direction VEVs influence the process of particle production by blocking preheating from the inflaton - the phase of rapid, non-perturbative inflaton decay.
Motivated by a recent discussion about the role of flat directions in the early universe a consistent model of inflation and preheating in supergravity with MSSM fields is built. It is based on a model proposed by M. Kawasaki, M. Yamaguchi and T. Yanagida. In the inflationary stage, the flat directions acquire large VEVs without spoiling the background of slow-roll, high-scale inflation consistent with the latest WMAP5 observational data. In the stage of particle production, naturally following inflation, the role of flat direction large VEVs depends strongly on effects connected with the supergravity framework and non-renormalizable terms in the superpotential, which have been neglected so far in the literature. Such effects turn out to be very important, changing the previous picture of preheating in the presence of large flat direction VEVs by allowing for efficient preheating from the inflaton.
Primary authors
Mrs
Anna Kaminska
(Institute of Theoretical Physics, University of Warsaw)
Mr
Pawel Pacholek
(Institute of Theoretical Physics, University of Warsaw)
