N=1 supergravity chaotic inflation in the braneworld scenario -: art. no. 063513

We study an N = 1 supergravity chaotic inflationary model in the context of the braneworld scenario. It is shown that successful inflation and reheating consistent with phenomenological constraints can be achieved via the new terms in the Friedmann equation arising from brane physics, provided the five-dimensional Planck scale satisfies M-5 less than or similar to 3.6 X 10(15) GeV. Interestingly, the model satisfies observational bounds with sub-Planckian field values, implying that chaotic inflation on the brane is free from the well known difficulties associated with the presence of higher order nonrenormalizable terms in the superpotential. A lower bound on M-5 is obtained from the requirement that the reheating temperature is higher than the temperature of the electroweak phase transition, M-5 greater than or similar to 1.6 X 10(13) GeV.