Inflation, Gravity Mediated Supersymmetry Breaking, and de Sitter Vacua in Supergravity with a Kähler-Invariant FI Term

Abstract

We use a new mechanism for generating a Fayet-Iliopoulos term in supergravity, which is not associated to an R symmetry, to construct a semi-realistic theory of slow-roll inflation for a theory with the same Kähler potential and superpotential as the KKLT string background (without anti-D3 branes). In our model, supersymmetry must be broken at a high scale in a hidden sector to ensure that the cutoff of the effective field theory is above the Hubble scale of inflation. The gravitino has a super-EeV mass and supersymmetry breaking is communicated to the observable sector through gravity mediation. Some mass scales of the supersymmetry-breaking soft terms in the observable sector can be parametrically smaller than the SUSY breaking scale. If a string realization of the new FI term were found, our model could be the basis for a low energy effective supergravity description of realistic superstring models of inflation.

22 pages. A mistake in the mass matrix of observable-sector scalars has been corrected. Results and conclusions remain unchanged. New references have been added