The Gravitino-Overproduction Problem in Inflationary Universe

Abstract

We show that the gravitino-overproduction problem is prevalent among inflation models in supergravity. An inflaton field ϕgenerically acquires (effective) non-vanishing auxiliary field G_ϕ, if the Kähler potential is non-minimal. The inflaton field then decays into a pair of the gravitinos. We extensively study the cosmological constraints on G_ϕfor a wide range of the gravitino mass. For many inflation models we explicitly estimate G_ϕ, and show that the gravitino-overproduction problem severely constrains the inflation models, unless such an interaction as K = κ/2 |ϕ|^2 z^2 + h.c. is suppressed (here z is the field responsible for the supersymmetry breaking). We find that many of them are already excluded or on the verge of, if κ\sim O(1).

34 pages, 7 figures. v2: minor corrections