Reviving chaotic inflation with fermion production: a supergravity model
  Processes of particle production during inflation can increase the amplitude
of the scalar metric perturbations. We show that such a mechanism can naturally
arise in supergravity models where an axion-like field, whose potential is
generated by monodromy, drives large field inflation. In this class of models
one generally expects instanton-like corrections to the superpotential. We
show, by deriving the equations of motion in models of supergravity with a
stabilizer, that such corrections generate an interaction between the inflaton
and its superpartner. This inflaton-inflatino interaction term is rapidly
oscillating, and can lead to copious production of fermions during inflation,
filling the Fermi sphere up to momenta much larger than the Hubble parameter.
In their turn, those fermions source inflaton fluctuations, increasing their
amplitude, and effectively lowering the tensor-to-scalar ratio for the model,
as discussed in [1, 2]. This allows, in particular, to bring the model where
the inflaton potential is quadratic (plus negligibly small instanton
corrections) to agree with all existing observations.
