A Minimal Supersymmetric Model of Particle Physics and the Early Universe

Understand

We consider a minimal supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model, with right-handed neutrinos and local B-L, the difference between baryon and lepton number, a symmetry which is spontaneously broken at the scale of grand unification.

• To a large extent, the parameters of the model are determined by gauge and Yukawa couplings of quarks and leptons.
• We show that this minimal model can successfully account for the earliest phases of the cosmological evolution: Inflation is driven by the energy density of a false vacuum of unbroken B-L symmetry, which ends in tachyonic preheating, i.e.
• the decay of the false vacuum, followed by a matter dominated phase with heavy B-L Higgs bosons.