Inflation and Generalized O'Raifeartaigh SUSY models

Thermal inflation usually requires an inflationary potential with nonrenormalizable operators (NROs). We demonstrate how O'Raifeartaigh models with or without NROs can provide thermal inflation and a solution to the moduli problem, as well as provide SUSY breaking. We then discuss a scenario where generalized O'Raifeartaigh potentials (with NROs) are included in a SUGRA where the supergravity and O'Raifeartaigh potentials provide negative and a positive contributions to the cosmological constant respectively. Tuning these contributions to nearly cancel can provide the present value of the dark energy.