Reviving chaotic inflation with fermion production: a supergravity model

Processes of particle production during inflation can increase the amplitude of the scalar metric perturbations. We show that such a mechanism can naturally arise in supergravity models where an axion-like field, whose potential is generated by monodromy, drives large field inflation. In this class of models one generally expects instanton-like corrections to the superpotential. We show, by deriving the equations of motion in models of supergravity with a stabilizer, that such corrections generate an interaction between the inflaton and its superpartner. This inflaton-inflatino interaction term is rapidly oscillating, and can lead to copious production of fermions during inflation, filling the Fermi sphere up to momenta much larger than the Hubble parameter. In their turn, these fermions source inflaton fluctuations, increasing their amplitude, and effectively lowering the tensor-to-scalar ratio for the model, as discussed in [1,2]. This allows, in particular, to bring the model where the inflaton potential is quadratic (plus negligibly small instanton corrections) to agree with all existing observations. (paper)