Reheating in No-Scale Models of Inflation

Abstract

Analogously to the suppression of inflaton decays into conformally-coupled scalar fields in the original Starobinsky $R + R^2$ model of inflation, inflaton decays to Standard Model fields are also suppressed in minimal no-scale models of inflation with field space curvature $\mathcal{R} = 2/3$. We study how this suppression can be avoided in generalized no-scale inflationary models. These include models in which the field space curvature $\mathcal{R} = 2/(3\alpha)$ with $\alpha \ne 1$ as exemplified by models derived from string theory, as well as models with non-minimal gauge kinetic terms and anomaly-induced couplings. We analyze direct and anomaly-induced inflaton couplings to gauge bosons and gauginos and demonstrate the K\"ahler-frame invariance of the physical gauge coupling. We determine the resulting reheating temperatures and the corresponding predictions in the $(n_s,r)$ plane. Finally, we consider an $R^3$ deformation of Starobinsky supergravity, which modifies the inflaton and stabilizer sectors but does not, by itself, generate new tree-level inflaton couplings to visible matter fields.