An Inflaton Candidate in Gauge Mediated Supersymmetry Breaking

Inflation, as currently understood, requires the presence of fields with very flat potentials. Supersymmetric models in which supersymmetry breaking is communicated by supergravity naturally yield such fields, but the scales are typically not suitable for obtaining both sufficient inflation and a suitable fluctuation spectrum. In the context of recent ideas about gauge mediation, there are new candidates for the inflaton. We present a simple model for slow-rollover inflation where the vacuum energy driving inflation is related to the same F-term responsible for the spectrum of supersymmetric particles in gauge mediated supersymmetry breaking models. The inflaton is identified with field responsible for the generation of the $\mu$-term\. This opens the possibility of getting some knowledge about the low-energy supersymmetric theory from measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation. Gravitinos do not pose a cosmological problem, while the moduli problem is ameliorated.