No Arabic abstract
We review some recent trends in the inflationary model building, the supersymmetry (SUSY) breaking, the gravitino Dark Matter (DM) and the Primordial Black Holes (PBHs) production in supergravity. The Starobinsky inflation can be embedded into supergravity when the inflaton belongs to the massive vector multiplet associated with a (spontaneously broken) $U(1)$ gauge symmetry. The SUSY and R-symmetry can be also spontaneously broken after inflation by the (standard) Polonyi mechanism. Polonyi particles and gravitinos are super heavy and can be copiously produced during inflation via the Schwinger mechanism sourced by the Universe expansion. The overproduction and instability problems can be avoided, and the positive cosmological constant (dark energy) can also be introduced. The observed abundance of the Cold Dark Matter (CDM) composed of gravitinos can be achieved in our supergravity model too, thus providing the unifying framework for inflation, supersymmetry breaking, dark energy and dark matter genesis. Our supergravity approach may also lead to a formation of primordial non-linear structures like stellar-mass-type black holes, and may include the SUSY GUTs inspired by heterotic string compactifications, unifying particle physics with quantum gravity.
The $R^2$ term in the Starobinsky inflationary model can be regarded as a leading quantum correction to the gravitational effective action. We assume that parity-preserving and parity-violating (axial) non-minimal couplings between curvature and electromagnetic field are also present in the effective action. In the Einstein frame, they turn into non-trivial couplings of the scalaron and curvature to the electromagnetic field. We make an assessment of inflationary magnetogenesis in this model. In the case of parity-preserving couplings, amplification of magnetic field is negligibly small. In the case of axial couplings, magnetogenesis is hampered by strong back-reaction on the inflationary process, resulting in possible amplification of magnetic field at most by the factor $10^5$ relative to its vacuum fluctuations.
The minimal Starobinsky supergravity with the inflaton (scalaron) and the goldstino in a massive vector supermultiplet is coupled to the dilaton-axion chiral superfield with the no-scale Kahler potential and a superpotential. The Kachru-Kallosh-Linde-Trivedi (KKLT)-type mechanism in the presence of a constant term in the superpotential is applied to stabilize the dilaton/axion during inflation, and it is shown to lead to an instability. The instability is cured by adding the alternative Fayet-Iliopoulos (FI) term that does not lead to the gauged $R$-symmetry. Other stabilization mechanisms, based on the Wess-Zumino (WZ)-type superpotential, are also studied in the presence of the FI term. A possible connection to a D3-brane is briefly discussed too.
The first inflationary model conceived was the one proposed by Starobinsky which includes an additional term quadratic in the Ricci-scalar R in the Einstein-Hilbert action. The model is now considered a target for several future cosmic microwave background experiments given its compatibility with current observational data. In this paper, we analyse the robustness of the Starobinsky inflation by inserting it into a generalized scenario based on a $beta$-Starobinsky inflation potential, which is motivated through brane inflation. In the Einstein frame, the generalized model recovers the original model for $beta=0$, whereas $forall beta eq 0$ represents an extended class of models that admit a wider range of solutions. We investigate limits on $beta$ from current cosmic microwave background and baryonic acoustic oscillation data and find that only a small deviation from the original scenario is allowed, $beta=-0.08 pm 0.12$ (68% C.L.), which is fully compatible with zero and confirms the robustness of the Starobinsky inflationary model in light of current observations.
Some recently proposed definitions of Jackiw-Teitelboim gravity and supergravities in terms of combinations of minimal string models are explored, with a focus on physics beyond the perturbative expansion in spacetime topology. While this formally involves solving infinite order non-linear differential equations, it is shown that the physics can be extracted to arbitrarily high accuracy in a simple controlled truncation scheme, using a combination of analytical and numerical methods. The non-perturbative spectral densities are explicitly computed and exhibited. The full spectral form factors, involving crucial non-perturbative contributions from wormhole geometries, are also computed and displayed, showing the non-perturbative details of the characteristic `slope, `dip, `ramp and `plateau features. It is emphasized that results of this kind can most likely be readily extracted for other types of JT gravity using the same methods.
Aspects of the low energy physics of certain Jackiw-Teitelboim gravity and supergravity theories are explored, using their recently presented non-perturbative description in terms of minimal string models. This regime necessarily involves non-perturbative phenomena, and the inclusion of wormhole geometries connecting multiple copies of the nearly AdS$_2$ boundary in the computation of ensemble averages of key quantities. A new replica-scaling limit is considered, combining the replica method and double scaling with the low energy limit. Using it, the leading free energy, entropy, and specific heat are explored for various examples. Two models of particular note are the JT supergravity theory defined as a (1,2) Altland-Zirnbauer matrix ensemble by Stanford and Witten, and the Saad-Shenker-Stanford matrix model of ordinary JT gravity (non-perturbatively improved at low energy). The full models have a finite non-vanishing spectral density at zero energy. The replica-scaling construction suggests for them a low temperature entropy and specific heat that are linear in temperature.