Abstract
We argue that all the necessary ingredients for successful inflation are present in the flat directions of the Minimally Supersymmetric Standard Model. We show that out of many gauge-invariant combinations of squarks, sleptons, and Higgs bosons, there are two directions, and , which are promising candidates for the inflaton. The model predicts more than -foldings, with an inflationary scale of , provides a tilted spectrum with an amplitude of and a negligible tensor perturbation. The temperature of the thermalized plasma could be as low as . Parts of the inflaton potential can be determined independently of cosmology by future particle physics experiments.
- Received 3 June 2006
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.97.191304
©2006 American Physical Society