Nonthermal Gravitino Production after Large Field Inflation

Abstract

We revisit the nonthermal gravitino production at the (p)reheating stage after inflation. Particular attention is paid to large field inflation models with a $\mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry, for which the previous perturbative analysis is inapplicable; and inflation models with a stabilizer superfield, which have not been studied non-perturbatively. It is found that in single-superfield inflation models (without the stabilizer field), nonthermal production of the transverse gravitino can be cosmologically problematic while the abundance of the longitudinal gravitino is small enough. In multi-superfield inflation models (with the stabilizer field), production of the transverse and longitudinal gravitinos is significantly suppressed, and they are cosmologically harmless. We also clarify the relation between the background field method used in the preheating context and the standard perturbative decay method to estimate the gravitino abundance.

47 pages, 3 figures; v3, published version, extended discussions in Section 5 and Appendix B