N=1 Supergravity Chaotic Inflation in the Braneworld Scenario

Abstract

We study a N=1 Supergravity chaotic inflationary model, in the context of the braneworld scenario. It is shown that successful inflation and reheating consistent with phenomenological constraints can be achieved via the new terms in the Friedmann equation arising from brane physics. Interestingly, the model satisfies observational bounds with sub-Planckian field values, implying that chaotic inflation on the brane is free from the well known difficulties associated with the presence of higher order non-renormalizable terms in the superpotential. A bound on the mass scale of the fifth dimension, $M_5 \gsim 1.3 \times 10^{-6} M_P$, is obtained from the requirement that the reheating temperature be higher than the temperature of the electroweak phase transition.