Reheating after inflation by supersymmetry breaking

Abstract

Abstract We study reheating after the end of inflation in models where the inflaton is the superpartner of goldstino and is charged under a gauged U(1) R-symmetry. We consider two classes of models – one is small field characterized by an almost flat Kähler space, and the other large field characterized by a hyperbolic Kähler space SU(1, 1)/U(1), while in both cases the inflaton superpotential is linear due to the R-symmetry. The inflationary observables of our models fit within 2 $$\sigma $$ σ CMB values. Upon coupling the inflaton sector to the (supersymmetric) Standard Model, we compute the MSSM parameters, mass spectrum, and decay modes of the inflaton, with the resulting reheating temperature around $$10^8$$ 10 8 GeV. We also find that both models can accommodate superheavy LSP dark matter, depending on the parameter choice.