Related papers: Dante's Waterfall
We constructed a model of natural inflation in the context of $\alpha$-attractor supergravity, in which both the dilaton field and the axion field are light during inflation, and the inflaton may be a combination of the two. The T-model…
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.…
A new hybrid inflationary scenario in the context of $f(R,{\Box}R)$-gravity is proposed. Demanding the waterfall field to 'support the potential from below' [unlike the original proposal by Stewart in Phys. Lett. B345, 414 (1995)], we…
We study the supergravity hybrid inflation model of Ref.[1] in the presence of a modulus field. The eta-problem is solved by a shift symmetry for the inflaton, which protects the inflaton mass even in the presence of the modulus field.…
The BICEP2 observation of a large tensor-to-scalar ratio, $r = 0.20^{+0.07}_{-0.05}$, implies that the inflaton $\phi$ in single-field inflation models must satisfy $\phi \sim 10M_{Pl}$ in order to produce sufficient inflation. This is a…
We study a string theory inspired model for hybrid inflation in the context of a brane-antibrane system partially compactified on a compact submanifold of (a caricature of) a Calabi-Yau manifold. The interbrane distance acts as the…
The hierarchy of fermion masses in the standard model may arise via the breaking of discrete gauge symmetries. The renormalizable interactions of the flavor-symmetry-breaking potential can have accidental global symmetries that are…
We consider a variant of Hybrid Inflation, where inflation is driven by two interacting scalar fields, one of which has a `Mexican hat' potential and the other a quartic potential. Given the appropriate initial conditions one of the fields…
Recently, a class of inflation models in supergravity with gauge non-singlet matter fields as the inflaton has been proposed. It is based on a `tribrid' structure in the superpotential and on a Heisenberg symmetry for solving the…
We propose a new realization of axion monodromy inflation in which axion monodromy arises from torsional cycles in a type IIB compactification. A class of monomial potentials is obtained with specific values for the power index. Moreover,…
We propose a landscape of many axions, where the axion potential receives various contributions from shift symmetry breaking effects. We show that the existence of the axion with a super-Planckian decay constant is very common in the axion…
Large field inflation is arguably the simplest and most natural variant of slow-roll inflation. Axion monodromy may be the most promising framework for realising this scenario. As one of its defining features, the long-range polynomial…
We consider a multi-field open inflation model, in which one of the fields dominates quantum tunneling from a false vacuum while the other field governs slow-roll inflation within the bubble nucleated from false vacuum decay. We call the…
In the standard cosmological picture the Universe underwent a brief period of near-exponential expansion, known as Inflation. This provides an explanation for structure formation through the amplification of perturbations by the rapid…
We consider models of inflation in supergravity with a shift symmetry. We focus on models with one moduli and one inflaton field. The presence of this symmetry guarantees the existence of a flat direction for the inflaton field. Mildly…
Fermion condensate inflation, where inflation emerges from four-fermion interactions induced by spacetime torsion, removes the need for additional scalar fields beyond the Standard Model. In this framework, the fermion field can be…
Wrapped branes in string compactifications introduce a monodromy that extends the field range of individual closed-string axions to beyond the Planck scale. Furthermore, approximate shift symmetries of the system naturally control…
In this lecture I will review the present status of inflation within string-based brane-world scenarios. The idea is to start from a supersymmetric configuration with two parallel static Dp-branes, and slightly break the supersymmetry…
We describe a simple mechanism that can lead to inflation within string-based brane-world scenarios. The idea is to start from a supersymmetric configuration with two parallel static Dp-branes, and slightly break the supersymmetry…
We introduce a class of new inflation models within the waterfall region of a generalized hybrid inflation framework. The initial conditions are generated in the valley of hybrid preinflation. Both single-field and multi-field inflationary…