Two-Stage Inflation in Supergravity

Abstract

We investigate the viability of a two-stage inflationary scenario in the context of supergravity, so as to resolve the problem of initial conditions for hybrid inflation. We allow for non-renormalizable terms in the superpotential and consider the most general form of the Kahler potential and the gauge kinetic function. We construct a model with two stages of inflation, the first driven by D-term and the second by F-term energy density. The viability of this scenario depends on the non-minimal terms in the Kahler potential, for which we derive the necessary constraints.