SupersymmetricD-term inflation, reheating, and Affleck-Dine baryogenesis

Abstract
The phenomenology of supersymmetric models of inflation, where the inflationary vacuum energy is dominated by D terms of a U(1), is investigated. Particular attention is paid to the questions of how to arrange for sufficient e folds of inflation to occur, what kind of thermal history is expected after the end of inflation, and how to implement successful baryogenesis. Such models are argued to require a more restrictive symmetry structure than previously thought. In particular, it is nontrivial that the decays of the fields driving D inflation can reheat the Universe in such a way as to avoid the strong gravitino production constraints. We also show how the initial conditions for Affleck-Dine baryogenesis can arise in these models and that the simplest flat directions along which a baryon number is generated can often be ruled out by the constraints coming from a decoherence of the condensate in a hot environment. At the end, we find that successful reheating and baryogenesis can take place in a large subset of D-inflationary models.
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