Related papers: Modulated Natural Inflation
The weak gravity conjecture applied for the aligned natural inflation indicates that generically there can be a modulation of the inflaton potential, with a period determined by sub-Planckian axion scale. We study the oscillations in the…
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…
The weak gravity conjecture imposes severe constraints on natural inflation. A trans-Planckian axion decay constant can only be realized if the potential exhibits an additional (subdominant) modulation with sub-Planckian periodicity. The…
Natural inflation relies on the existence of an axion decay constant which is super-Planckian. In string theory only sub-Planckian axion decay constants have been found in any controlled regime. However in field theory it is possible to…
We study the CMB observables in axion monodromy inflation. These well-motivated scenarios for inflation in string theory have monomial potentials over super-Planckian field ranges, with superimposed sinusoidal modulations from instanton…
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…
Natural (axionic) inflation provides a well-motivated and predictive scheme for the description of the early universe. It leads to sizeable primordial tensor modes and thus a high mass scale of the inflationary potential. Naively this seems…
We propose a mechanism for the natural inflation with and without modulation in the framework of type IIB string theory on toroidal orientifold or orbifold. We explicitly construct the stabilization potential of complex structure, dilaton…
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…
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 continue the investigation of F-term axion monodromy inflation in string theory, while seriously taking the issue of moduli stabilization into account. For a number of closed and open string models, we show that they suffer from serious…
We provide type IIB string embeddings of two axion variants of natural inflation. We use a combination of RR 2 form axions as the inflaton field and have its potential generated by non perturbative effects in the superpotential. Besides…
To obtain natural inflation with large tensor-to-scalar ratio in string framework, we need a special moduli stabilization mechanism which can separate the masses of real and imaginary components of K\"ahler moduli at different scales, and…
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…
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 primordial non-Gaussinity predicted from simple models of inflation with a linear potential and superimposed oscillations. This generic form of the potential is predicted by the axion monodromy inflation model, that has…
Flux couplings to string theory axions yield super-Planckian field ranges along which the axion potential energy grows. At the same time, other aspects of the physics remain essentially unchanged along these large displacements, respecting…
An attractive candidate for the inflaton is an axion slowly rolling down a flat potential protected by a perturbative shift symmetry. Realisations of this idea within large field, natural and monomial inflation have been disfavoured by…
The Weak Gravity Conjecture, if valid, rules out simple models of Natural Inflation by restricting their axion decay constant to be sub-Planckian. We revisit stringy attempts to realise Natural Inflation, with a single open string axionic…
We explore the possibility of obtaining inflation in weakly coupled heterotic string theory, where the model dependent axions are responsible for driving inflation. This model can be considered as a certain extrapolation of…