GUT-scale inflation with sizeable tensor modes

Understand

A sizeable tensor-to-scalar ratio, such as recently claimed by BICEP2, would imply a scale of inflation at the typical scale of supersymmetric grand unification.

• This could be an accident, or strong support for supersymmetric theories.
• Models of F-term hybrid inflation naturally connect the GUT scale with the inflationary scale, but they also predict the tensor-to-scalar ratio to be unmeasurably small.
• In this work we analyze a general UV embedding of F-term hybrid inflation into a supergravity theory with a general Kahler potential.