Supersymmetric inflation and large-scale structure

Abstract

In effective supergravity theories following from the superstring, a modulus field can quite naturally set the neccessary initial conditions for successful cosmological inflation to be driven by a hidden sector scalar field. The leading term in the scalar potential is {\em cubic} hence the spectrum of scalar density perturbations neccessarily deviates from scale-invariance, while the generation of gravitational waves is negligible. The growth of large-scale structure is then consistent with observational data assuming a critical density cold dark matter universe, with no need for a component of hot dark matter. The model can be tested thorough measurements of cosmic microwave background anisotropy on small angular scales.

11 pages (revtex) including 6 figures (epsf, rotate); Invited talk at the Inauguration Conference of the Asia Pacific Center for Theoretical Physics, Seoul (June 4-10 1996), and the Fourth Workshop on High Energy Physics Phenomenology, Calcutta (January 2-16 1996); Postscript also available from ftp://ftp.physics.ox.ac.uk/pub/local/users/sarkar/susylss.ps.gz