A General Supergravity Formalism for a Naturally Flat Inflaton Potential

Abstract

A globally supersymmetric model of inflation will not work in a generic supergravity theory because the higher order, nonrenormalisable supergravity corrections destroy the flatness of the inflaton's potential. In this talk I derive a form for the Kahler potential which eliminates these corrections if $ W = \partial W / \partial \varphi = \psi = 0 $ during inflation (where $W$ is the superpotential, the inflaton is contained in $\varphi$, and $ \partial W / \partial \psi \neq 0 $). I then point out that Kahler potentials of the required form often occur in superstrings and that the target space duality symmetries of superstrings often contain R-parities which would make $ W = \partial W / \partial \varphi = 0 $ automatic for $\psi = 0$.