Gravitino condensation, supersymmetry breaking and inflation

Abstract

Motivated by dualistic considerations of the reality of quark condensation in quantum chromodynamics, and the connections of supergravity to the exotic physics of string and M-theory, in this thesis we investigate the dynamical breaking of local supersymmetry via gravitino condensation. We firstly demonstrate non-perturbative gravitino mass generation via this mechanism in flat spacetime, and from this derive the condensate mode wavefunction renormalisation. By then calculating the full canonically normalised one-loop effective potential for the condensate mode about a de Sitter background, we demonstrate that, contrary to claims in the literature, this process may both occur and function in a phenomenologically viable manner. In particular, we find that outside of certain unfortunate gauge choices, the stability of the condensate is intimately tied via gravitational degrees of freedom to the sign of the tree-level cosmological constant. Furthermore, we find that the energy density liberated may provide the necessary inflation of the early universe via an effective scalar degree of freedom, provided by the condensate, acting as the inflaton. However, in so doing we find that simultaneously phenomenologically viable inflation and supersymmetry breaking via this approach are mutually incompatible in the simplest supergravity settings. As this mechanism takes place in the gravitational sector, relying on the ubiquitous gravitino torsion terms, we argue that it can also enjoy a certain universality in the context of supergravity and string theories, in that it does not rely on specific or arbitrary choices of potential and/or matter content. This then allows straightforward transplantation of these results into other settings. We present in detail our findings establishing contact between this scenario and known phenomenology, and discuss future avenues for research.

KCL PhD thesis, ~ 130 pages including appendices, many figures

References in corpus (18)

• Combined Measurement of the Higgs Boson Mass in $pp$ Collisions at $\sqrt{s}=7$ and 8 TeV with the ATLAS and CMS Experiments
• An Improved Experimental Limit on the Electric Dipole Moment of the Neutron
• Symmetries and Strings in Field Theory and Gravity
• The Minimal Volkov - Akulov - Starobinsky Supergravity
• Embedding (R+R^2)-Inflation into Supergravity
• Quantum gravity at a TeV and the renormalization of Newton's constant
• Graviton 1-loop partition function for 3-dimensional massive gravity
• Inflation in Supergravity with a Single Chiral Superfield
• Inflation in no-scale supergravity
• Generic Scalar Potentials for Inflation in Supergravity with a Single Chiral Superfield
• Minimal $R+R^2$ Supergravity Models of Inflation Coupled to Matter
• Inflation via Gravitino Condensation in Dynamically Broken Supergravity
• On the initial conditions for inflation with plateau potentials: the $R+R^2$ (super)gravity case
• No scale SUGRA SO(10) derived Starobinsky Model of Inflation
• Topological inflation from the Starobinsky model in supergravity
• Cosmological properties of a generic (\cal R)^2-supergravity
• Bound on four-dimensional Planck mass
• Inflation in $R^2$ supergravity with non-minimal superpotentials

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Anti-brane uplift instability from goldstino condensation