Natural Chaotic Inflation in Supergravity

Abstract

We propose a chaotic inflation model in supergravity. In the model the Kahler potential has a Nambu-Goldstone-type shift symmetry of the inflaton chiral multiplet which ensures the flatness of the inflaton potential beyond the Planck scale. We show that chaotic inflation naturally takes place by introducing a small breaking term of the shift symmetry in the superpotential. This may open a new branch of model building for inflationary cosmology in the framework of supergravity.