Higher Curvature Supergravity, Supersymmetry Breaking and Inflation

Abstract

In these lectures, after a short introduction to cosmology, we discuss the supergravity embedding of higher curvature models of inflation. The supergravity description of such models is presented for the two different formulations of minimal supergravity.

Comments: Contribution to the Proceedings of the Erice International School of Subnuclear Physics, 52nd Course, Erice 24 June-3 July 2014. Dedicated to the memory of Bruno Zumino; v3: few typos corrected and some clarifications added