English

Planck 2013 and Superconformal Symmetry

High Energy Physics - Theory 2014-02-05 v1 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

We explain why the concept of a spontaneously broken superconformal symmetry is useful to describe inflationary models favored by the Planck. Non-minimal coupling of complex scalars to curvature, N(X, X*) R, is compulsory for superconformal symmetry. Here N is the Kahler potential of the embedding moduli space, including the inflaton and the conformon. It appears that such a non-minimal coupling allows generic chaotic models of inflation to reach an agreement with the observable (n_{s},r) values. We describe here the superconformal versions of the cosmological attractors whose bosonic part was presented in lectures of A. Linde in this volume. A distinguishing feature of this class of models is that they tend to lead to very similar predictions which are not very sensitive with respect to strong modifications of the theory. The (super)conformal symmetry underlying (super)gravity allows a universal description of a large class of models which agree with observations and predict the tensor to scalar ratio 10^{-3} < r < 10^{-1}.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1402.0527,
  title  = {Planck 2013 and Superconformal Symmetry},
  author = {Renata Kallosh},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1402.0527},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

20 p, Based on the lecture at the Les Houches School "Post-Planck Cosmology" 2013

R2 v1 2026-06-22T03:00:17.294Z