Phase transition and monopole production in supergravity inflation

Understand

In F-term supergravity inflation models, scalar fields other than the inflaton generically receive a Hubble induced mass, which may restore gauge symmetries during inflation and phase transitions may occur during or after inflation as the Hubble parameter decreases.

• We study monopole (and domain wall) production associated with such a phase transition in chaotic inflation in supergravity and obtain a severe constraint on the symmetry breaking scale which is related with the tensor-to-scalar ratio.
• Depending on model parameters, it is possible that monopoles are sufficiently diluted to be free from current constraints but still observable by planned experiments.