Polynomial Chaotic Inflation in Supergravity

Abstract

We present a general polynomial chaotic inflation model in supergravity, for which the predicted spectral index and tensor-to-scalar ratio can lie within the 1 sigma region allowed by the Planck results. Most importantly, the predicted tensor-to-scalar ratio is large enough to be probed in the on-going and future B-mode experiments. We study the inflaton dynamics and the subsequent reheating process in a couple of specific examples. The non-thermal gravitino production from the inflaton decay can be suppressed in a case with a discrete Z_2 symmetry. We find that the reheating temperature can be naturally as high as O(10^{9-10}) GeV, sufficient for baryon asymmetry generation through (non-)thermal leptogenesis.