Initial conditions for inflation and the energy scale of SUSY-breaking
  from the (nearly) gaussian sky
  We show how general initial conditions for small field inflation can be
obtained in multi-field models. This is provided by non-linear angular friction
terms in the inflaton that provide a phase of non-slow-roll inflation before
the slow-roll inflation phase. This in turn provides a natural mechanism to
star small-field slow-roll at nearly zero velocity for arbitrary initial
conditions. We also show that there is a relation between the scale of SUSY
breaking sqrt (f) and the amount of non-gaussian fluctuations generated by the
inflaton. In particular, we show that in the local non-gaussian shape there
exists the relation sqrt (f) = 10^{13} GeV sqrt (f_NL). With current
observational limits from Planck, and adopting the minimum amount of
non-gaussian fluctuations allowed by single-field inflation, this provides a
very tight constraint for the SUSY breaking energy scale sqrt (f) = 3-7 x
10^{13} GeV at 95% confidence. Further limits, or detection, from next year's
Planck polarisation data will further tighten this constraint by a factor of
two. We highlight that the key to our approach is to identify the inflaton with
the scalar component of the goldstino superfield. This superfield is universal
and implements the dynamics of SUSY breaking as well as superconformal
breaking.
