Red Spectral Tilt and Observable Gravity Waves in Shifted Hybrid Inflation

Understand

We consider supersymmetric shifted hybrid inflation models with a red tilted scalar spectral index n_s in agreement with the WMAP 7-yr central value.

• If non-minimal supergravity corrections are included, these models can also support a tensor-to-scalar ratio as large as r = 0.02, which may be observable by the Planck Satellite.
• In contrast to the standard supersymmetric hybrid inflation scenario, topological defects produced via gauge symmetry breaking are inflated away in the shifted version of the theory.