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Pallis, C., & Shafi, Q. (2014). From hybrid to quadratic inflation with high-scale supersymmetry breaking. Phys. Lett. B, 736, 261–266.
Abstract: Motivated by the reported discovery of inflationary gravity waves by the BICEP2 experiment, we propose an inflationary scenario in supergravity, based on the standard superpotential used in hybrid inflation. The new model yields a tensor-to-scalar ratio r similar or equal to 0.14 and scalar spectral index n(s) similar or equal to 0.964, corresponding to quadratic (chaotic) inflation. The important new ingredients are the high-scale, (1.6-10) . 10(13) GeV, soft supersymmetry breaking mass for the gauge singlet inflaton field and a shift symmetry imposed on the Kahler potential. The end of inflation is accompanied, as in the earlier hybrid inflation models, by the breaking of a gauge symmetry at (1.2-7.1) . 10(16) GeV, comparable to the grand-unification scale.
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Pallis, C., & Shafi, Q. (2015). Gravity waves from non-minimal quadratic inflation. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 03(3), 023–31pp.
Abstract: We discuss non-minimal quadratic inflation in supersymmetric (SUSY) and non-SUSY models which entails a linear coupling of the inflaton to gravity. Imposing a lower bound on the parameter c(R), involved in the coupling between the inflaton and the Ricci scalar curvature, inflation can be attained even for subplanckian values of the inflaton while the corresponding effective theory respects the perturbative unitarity up to the Planck scale. Working in the non-SUSY context we also consider radiative corrections to the inflationary potential due to a possible coupling of the inflaton to bosons or fermions. We find ranges of the parameters, depending mildly on the renormalization scale, with adjustable values of the spectral index n(s), tensor-to-scalar ratio r similar or equal to (2 – 4) . 10(-3), and an inflaton mass close to 3 . 10 (13) GeV. In the SUSY framework we employ two gauge singlet chiral superfields, a logarithmic Kahler potential including all the allowed terms up to fourth order in powers of the various fields, and determine uniquely the superpotential by applying a continuous R and a global U(1) symmetry. When the Kahler manifold exhibits a no-scale-type symmetry, the model predicts n(s) similar or equal to 0.963 and r similar or equal to 0.004. Beyond no-scale SUGRA, n(s) and r depend crucially on the coefficient involved in the fourth order term, which mixes the inflaton with the accompanying non-inflaton field in the Kahler potential, and the prefactor encountered in it. Increasing slightly the latter above (-3), an efficient enhancement of the resulting r can be achieved putting it in the observable range. The inflaton mass in the last case is confined in the range (5 – 9) . 10(13) GeV.
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Maji, R., Park, W. I., & Shafi, Q. (2023). Gravitational waves from walls bounded by strings in SO(10) model of pseudo-Goldstone dark matter. Phys. Lett. B, 845, 138127–5pp.
Abstract: We explore the gravitational wave spectrum generated by string-wall structures in an SO (10) (Spin(10)) based scenario of pseudo-Goldstone boson dark matter (pGDM) particle. This dark matter candidate is a linear combination of the Standard Model (SM) singlets present in the 126 and 16 dimensional Higgs fields. The Higgs 126-plet vacuum expectation value (VEV) < 126(H)> leaves unbroken the Z(2) subgroup of Z(4), the center of SO (10). Among other things, this yields topologically stable cosmic strings with a string tension μsimilar to < 126(H)>(2). The subsequent (spontaneous) breaking of Z(2) at a significantly lower scale by the 16-plet VEV < 16(H)> leads to the appearance of domain walls bounded by the strings produced earlier. We display the gravitational wave spectrum for G μvalues varying between 10(-15) and 10(-9) (< 126(H)> similar to 10(11) – 10(14) GeV), and < 16(H)> similar to 0.1 – 10(2) TeV range (G denotes Newton's constant.) These predictions can be tested, as we show, by a variety of (proposed) experiments including LISA, ET, CE and others.
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Lazarides, G., Reig, M., Shafi, Q., Srivastava, R., & Valle, J. W. F. (2019). Spontaneous Breaking of Lepton Number and the Cosmological Domain Wall Problem. Phys. Rev. Lett., 122(15), 151301–5pp.
Abstract: We show that if global lepton number symmetry is spontaneously broken in a postinflation epoch, then it can lead to the formation of cosmological domain walls. This happens in the well-known “Majoron paradigm” for neutrino mass generation. We propose some realistic examples that allow spontaneous lepton number breaking to be safe from such domain walls.
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Gomez, M. E., Lola, S., Ruiz de Austri, R., & Shafi, Q. (2018). Dark matter, sparticle spectroscopy and muon (g-2) in SU(4)(c) x SU(2)(L) x SU(2)(R). J. High Energy Phys., 10(10), 062–24pp.
Abstract: We explore the sparticle mass spectra including LSP dark matter within the framework of supersymmetric SU(4)(c) x SU(2)(L) x SU(2)(R) (422) models, taking into account the constraints from extensive LHC and cold dark matter searches. The soft supersymmetry-breaking parameters at M-GUT can be non-universal, but consistent with the 422 symmetry. We identify a variety of coannihilation scenarios compatible with LSP dark matter, and study the implications for future supersymmetry searches and the ongoing muon g-2 experiment.
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