Subcritical regime of hybrid inflation with modular $A_4$ symmetry

Abstract: We consider a supergravity model that has the modular $A_4$ symmetry and discuss the interplay between the neutrino mixing and inflation. The model contains right-handed neutrinos that have the Majorana masses and additional Yukawa couplings to the waterfall field. In the model an active neutrino is massless and we find that only the inverted hierarchy is allowed and the Majorana phase is predicted to be around $\pm (120\text{--}180)^\circ$ from the observed neutrino mixing data. In the early universe, one of right-handed sneutrinos plays the role of the inflaton field. Focusing on the subcritical regime of the hybrid inflation that is consistent with the cosmic microwave background data, we analyze the dynamics of the scalar sector and derive an upper bound $\mathcal{O}(10^{10})~{\rm GeV}$ on the scale of the Majorana mass.