Hybrid Inflation, Dark Energy And Dark Matter

Abstract

It has been suggested that the dark energy density \rho_v ~ 10^{-12} eV^4 in the universe is associated with a metastable (false) vacuum, while the true vacuum has a vanishing cosmological constant. By including supergravity corrections we show how this is naturally realized in realistic supersymmetric hybrid inflation models. With a fundamental supersymmetry breaking scale ~ TeV, the LSP is not a suitable candidate for cold dark matter. We consider axion physics to overcome this and simultaneously provide a resolution of the MSSM \mu problem.