Dilaton Stabilisation in $D$-term Inflation

Abstract

Dilaton stabilisation is usually considered to pose a serious obstacle to successful $D$-term inflation in superstring theories. We argue that the physics of gaugino condensation is likely to be modified during the inflationary phase in such a way as to enhance the gaugino condensation scale. This enables dilaton stabilisation during inflation with the $D$-term still dominating the vacuum energy at the stable minimum.