Two-stage inflation in supergravity

Abstract

We investigate the viability of a two-stage inflationary scenario in the context of supergravity, so as to resolve the problem of initial conditions for hybrid inflation. We allow for nonrenormalizable terms in the superpotential and consider the most general form of the K\"ahler potential and the gauge kinetic function. We construct a model with two stages of inflation, the first driven by D-term and the second by F-term energy density. The viability of this scenario depends on the nonminimal terms in the K\"ahler potential, for which we derive the necessary constraints.