Related papers: Natural and Multi-Natural Inflation in Axion Lands…
Multiple axions form a landscape in the presence of various shift symmetry breaking terms. Eternal inflation populates the axion landscape, continuously creating new universes by bubble nucleation. Slow-roll inflation takes place after the…
We discuss inflation models within supersymmetry and supergravity frameworks with a landscape of chiral superfields and one $U(1)$ shift symmetry which is broken by non-perturbative symmetry breaking terms in the superpotential. We label…
If the inflaton is a pseudo-scalar axion, the axion shift symmetry can protect the flatness of its potential from too large radiative corrections. This possibility, known as natural inflation, requires an axion scale which is greater than…
Natural (axionic) inflation can accommodate sizeable primordial tensor modes but suffers from the necessity of trans-Planckian variations of the inflaton field. This problem can be solved via the mechanism of aligned axions…
We propose a natural inflation model driven by an imaginary or axionic component of a K\"ahler modulus in string-inspired supergravity. The shift symmetry of the axion is gauged under an anomalous $U(1)_X$ symmetry, which leads to a…
We propose a model for inflation consisting of an axionic scalar field coupled to a set of three non-Abelian gauge fields. Our model's novel requirement is that the gauge fields begin inflation with a rotationally invariant vacuum…
We show that inflation with a quadratic potential occurs naturally in theories where an axion-like field mixes with a 4-form. Such an axion is massive, with the mass which arises from the mixing being protected by the axion shift symmetry.…
In models of natural inflation, the inflaton is an axion-like particle. Unfortunately, axion potentials in UV-complete theories appear to be too steep to drive inflation. We show that, even for a steep potential, natural inflation can occur…
Because the inflationary mechanism is extremely sensitive to UV-physics, the construction of theoretically robust models of inflation provides a unique window on Planck-scale physics. We review efforts to use an axion with a shift symmetry…
The original model of axion natural inflation produces a tensor-to-scalar ratio above the experimental limit. Aligned axion inflation admits inflationary trajectories that originate near a saddle point of the two-field potential, and…
We derive the requirements that a generic axion-like field has to satisfy in order to play the role of the inflaton field in the warm inflation scenario. Compared to the parameter space in ordinary natural inflation models, we find that the…
We investigate slow-roll inflation in a multi-field random Gaussian landscape. The landscape is assumed to be small-field, with a correlation length much smaller than the Planck scale. Inflation then typically occurs in small patches of the…
We revisit the recently proposed multi-natural inflation and its realization in supergravity in light of the BICEP2 results. Multi-natural inflation is a single-field inflation model where the inflaton potential consists of multiple…
In the so-called natural inflation, an axion-like inflaton is assumed to have a cosine-type periodic potential. This is not the case in a very simple model in which the axion-like inflaton is coupled to an SU(N) (or other) pure Yang-Mills,…
We propose a multi-natural inflation model in which the single-field inflaton potential consists of two or more sinusoidal potentials that are comparable in size, but have different periodicity with a possible non-zero relative phase. The…
The recent BICEP2 measurements of B-modes indicate a large tensor-to-scalar ratio in inflationary cosmology, which points towards trans-Planckian evolution of the inflaton. We propose possible string-theory realizations thereof. Schemes for…
We study moduli stabilization in combination with inflation in heterotic orbifold compactifications in the light of a large Hubble scale and the favored tensor-to-scalar ratio $r \approx 0.05$. To account for a trans-Planckian field range…
We study the general multi-axion systems, focusing on the possibility of large field inflation driven by axions. We find that through axion mixing from a non-diagonal metric on the moduli space and/or from St\"uckelberg coupling to a U(1)…
Slow-roll inflation requires the inflaton field to have an exceptionally flat potential, which combined with measurements of the scale of inflation demands some degree of fine-tuning. Alternatively, the flatness of the potential could be…
We study an axion inflation model recently proposed within the framework of type IIB superstring theory, where we pay a particular attention to a sub-Planckian axion decay constant. Our axion potential can lead to the small field inflation…