Planck 2018 and Brane Inflation Revisited

Abstract

We revisit phenomenological as well as string-theoretical aspects of D-brane inflation cosmological models. Phenomenologically these models stand out on par with $\alpha$-attractors, as models with Planck-compatible values of $n_s$, moving down to the sweet spot in the data with decreasing value of $r$. On the formal side we present a new supersymmetric version of these models in the context of de Sitter supergravity with a nilpotent multiplet and volume modulus stabilization. The geometry of the nilpotent multiplet is evaluated in the framework of string theory.