Related papers: Flattened Axion Monodromy Beyond Two Derivatives
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…
We study models of inflation with two scalar fields and non-canonical kinetic terms, focusing on the case in which the curvature and isocurvature perturbations are strongly coupled to each other. In the regime where a heavy mode can be…
We study the inflation scenarios, in the framework of superstring theory, where the inflaton is an axion producing the adiabatic curvature perturbations while there exists another light axion producing the isocurvature perturbations. We…
Inflationary models driven by a large number of axion fields are discussed in the context of type IIB compactifications with N=1 supersymmetry. The inflatons arise as the scalar modes of the R-R two-forms evaluated on vanishing two-cycles…
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 focus on the massive gauge theory formulation of axion monodromy inflation. We argue that a gauge symmetry hidden in these models is the key protection mechanism from dangerous corrections from both field theory and gravitational…
We present a simple two-field model of inflation and show how to embed it in string theory as a straightforward generalization of axion monodromy models. Phenomenologically, the predictions are equivalent to those of chaotic inflation, and…
We study the dynamics of axion-like fields in F-theory and suggest that they can serve as inflatons in models of natural inflation. The axions arise from harmonic three-forms on the F-theory compactification space and parameterize a complex…
We present a simple effective field theory formulation of a general family of single field flux monodromy models for which strong coupling effects at large field values can flatten the potential and activate operators with higher powers of…
We explore the effects of heavy degrees of freedom on the evolution and perturbations of light modes in multifield inflation. We use a simple two-field model as an example to illustrate the subtleties of integrating out massive fields in a…
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)…
Axion inflation entails a coupling of the inflaton field to gauge fields through the Chern-Simons term. This results in a strong gauge field production during inflation, which backreacts on the inflaton equation of motion. Here we show that…
We investigate the consequences of general curved trajectories in multi-field inflation. After setting up a completely general formalism using the mass basis, which naturally accommodates the notion of light and heavy modes, we study in…
High-scale string inflationary models are in well-known tension with low-energy supersymmetry. A promising solution involves models where the inflaton is the volume of the extra dimensions so that the gravitino mass relaxes from large…
We investigate the axion inflation model derived by poly-instanton effects in type II superstring theories. Poly-instanton effects are instanton effects corrected by another instanton and it can generate the modulus-axion potential with the…
We develop new scenarios of large field inflation in type IIA string compactifications in which the key ingredient is a D6-brane that creates a potential for a B-field axion. The potential has the multi-branched structure typical of F-term…
We present an explicit embedding of axionic N-flation in type IIB string compactifications where most of the Kahler moduli are stabilised by perturbative effects, and so are hierarchically heavier than the corresponding N >> 1 axions whose…
We propose a new type of axion inflation with complex structure moduli in the framework of type IIB superstring theory compactified on Calabi-Yau manifold. The inflaton is identified as the axion for the complex structure moduli whose…
Heavy isocurvature fields may have a strong influence on the low energy dynamics of curvature perturbations during inflation, as long as the inflationary trajectory becomes non-geodesic in the multi-field target space (the landscape). If…
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…