Hiding cosmic strings in supergravity D-term inflation

Abstract

The influence of higher-order terms in the Kähler potential of the supergravity D-term inflation model on the density perturbation is studied. We show that these terms can make the inflaton potential flatter, which lowers the energy scale of inflation under the COBE/WMAP normalization. As a result, the mass per unit length of cosmic strings, which are produced at the end of inflation, can be reduced to a harmless but detectable level without introducing a tiny Yukawa coupling. Our scenario can naturally be implemented in models with a low cut-off as in Type I or Type IIB orientifold models.

15 pages, 4 figures