Inflation and the Nature of Supersymmetry Breaking

The scale at which supersymmetry is broken and the mechanism by which supersymmetry breaking is fed down to the observable sector has rich implications on the way Nature may have chosen to accomplish inflation. We discuss a simple model for slow rollover inflation which is minimal in the sense that the inflaton may be identified with the field responsible for the generation of the $\mu$-term. Inflation takes place at very late times and is characterized by a very low reheating temperature. This property is crucial to solve the gravitino problem and may help to ameliorate the cosmological moduli problem. The COBE normalized value of the vacuum energy driving inflation is naturally of the order of $10^{11}$ GeV. This favors the N=1 supergravity scenario where supersymmetry breaking is mediated by gravitational interactions. Nonetheless, smaller values of the vacuum energy are not excluded by present data on the temperature anisotropy and the inflationary scenario may be implemented in the context of new recent ideas about gauge mediation where the standard model gauge interactions can serve as the messangers of supersymmetry breaking. In this class of models supersymmetry breaking masses are usually prop ortional to the F-term of a gauge singlet superfield. The same F-term may provide the vacuum energy density necessary to drive inflation. The spectrum of density perturbations is characterized by a spectral index which is significantly displaced from one. The measurements of the temperature anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background radiation at the accuracy expected to result from the planned missions will be able to confirm or disprove this prediction and to help in getting some deeper insight into the nature of supersymmetry breaking.