Related papers: Evidence for Inflation in an Axion Landscape
Axion inflation, i.e. an axion-like inflaton coupled to an Abelian gauge field through a Chern-Simons interaction, comes with a rich and testable phenomenology. This is particularly true in the strong backreaction regime, where the gauge…
We propose a scenario for realizing super-Planckian axion decay constants in Calabi-Yau orientifolds of type IIB string theory, leading to large-field inflation. Our construction is a simple embedding in string theory of the mechanism of…
Chain Inflation is an alternative to slow roll inflation in which the universe undergoes a series of transitions between different vacua. The density perturbations (studied in this paper) are seeded by the probabilistic nature of tunneling…
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 propose a class of inflation models with potential V(\phi)=\alpha \phi^n exp(-\beta^m \phi^m). We show that such kind of inflaton potentials can be realized in supergravity theory with a small shift symmetry breaking term in the K\"ahler…
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…
We propose the first model of warm inflation in which the particle production emerges directly from coupling the inflaton to Standard Model particles. Warm inflation, an early epoch of sustained accelerated expansion at finite temperature,…
N-flation is a radiatively stable scenario for chaotic inflation in which the displacements of $N \gg 1$ axions with decay constants $f_1 \le \ldots \le f_N < M_P$ lead to a super-Planckian effective displacement equal to the Pythagorean…
Using the universal X superfield that measures in the UV the violation of conformal invariance we build up a model of multifield inflation. The underlying dynamics is the one controlling the natural flow of this field in the IR to the…
In inflationary scenarios with more than one scalar field, inflation may proceed even if each of the individual fields has a potential too steep for that field to sustain inflation on its own. We show that scalar fields with exponential…
The QCD axion solving the strong CP problem may originate from antisymmetric tensor gauge fields in compactified string theory, with a decay constant around the GUT scale. Such possibility appears to be ruled out now by the detection of…
We investigate the possibility that inflation originates from a composite field theory, in terms of an effective chiral Lagrangian involving a dilaton and pions. The walking dynamics of the theory constrain the potential in a specific way,…
We study the pattern of oscillations in the primordial power spectrum in axion monodromy inflation, accounting for drifts in the oscillation period that can be important for comparing to cosmological data. In these models the potential…
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 non-linear dynamics of axion inflation, capturing for the first time the inhomogeneity and full dynamical range during strong backreaction, till the end of inflation. Accounting for inhomogeneous effects leads to a number of…
The large tensor spectrum recently observed by the BICEP2 Collaboration requires a super-Planckian field variation of the inflaton in the single-field inflationary scenario. The required slow-roll parameter \epsilon \approx 0.01 would…
We study inflationary potentials in the framework of superstring theories. Successful inflation may occur due to chiral fields, but only after the dilaton and moduli are stabilized. This is achieved by demanding an S-duality invariant…
We report on a new class of fast-roll inflationary models. In a huge part of its parameter space, inflationary perturbations exhibit quite unusual phenomena such as scalar and tensor modes freezing out at widely different times, as well as…
We explain why the concept of a spontaneously broken superconformal symmetry is useful to describe inflationary models favored by the Planck. Non-minimal coupling of complex scalars to curvature, N(X, X*) R, is compulsory for superconformal…
We study the dynamics of inflation in a generalized scalar-torsion gravity scenario by assuming a canonical scalar field non-minimally coupled to torsion with a Galileon-type self-interaction. After obtaining the field equations for a flat…