Related papers: QCD Axion Hybrid Inflation
If a light axion is present during inflation and becomes part of dark matter afterwards, its quantum fluctuations contribute to dark matter isocurvature. In this article, we introduce a whole new suite of cosmological observables for axion…
It was recently found that the decay of inflaton and the SUSY breaking field produces many gravitinos in the gravity mediation scenario. These discoveries led to an exclusion of many inflation models such as chaotic, (smooth) hybrid,…
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)…
We study the early stages of an oscillatory reheating phase in an inflaton plus spectator axion-SU(2) system, including both an axion-gauge Chern-Simons coupling $\chi F\tilde{F}$ and a gravitational Chern-Simons coupling $\chi R\tilde{R}$.…
We consider a novel cosmological scenario in which a curvaton is long-lived and plays the role of cold dark matter (CDM) in the presence of a short, secondary inflation. Non-trivial evolution of the large scale cosmological perturbation in…
We investigate axion inflation where the gravitational Chern-Simons term is coupled to a periodic function of the inflaton. We find that tensor perturbations with different polarizations are amplified in different ways by the Chern-Simons…
Recent investigations have shown that inflation can be driven by four-dimensional strongly interacting theories non-minimally coupled to gravity. We explore this paradigm further by considering composite inflation driven by orientifold…
We consider axions lighter than what their QCD couplings might otherwise suggest. Starting with a $\mathbb{Z}_N$-axion, we introduce a small explicit $\mathbb{Z}_N$ symmetry-breaking coupling between the Standard Model Higgs boson and a…
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…
Usual inflation is realized with a slow rolling scalar field minimally coupled to gravity. In contrast, we consider dynamics of a scalar with a flat effective potential, conformally coupled to gravity. Surprisingly, it contains an attractor…
With the Planck 2015 result, most of the well known canonical large field inflation models turned out to be strongly disfavored. Axion inflation is one of such models which is becoming marginalized with the increasing precession of CMB…
Multi-natural inflation is studied in the context of warm inflation. We study the warm multi-natural inflation scenario with both linear and cubic temperature-dependent dissipation coefficients. The model is motivated by axion-like…
We explore a scenario that allows for a strong first order phase-transition of QCD at non-negligible baryon number in the early universe and its possible cosmological observable consequences. The main assumption is a quasi-stable QCD-vacuum…
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…
If inflation scale is high, light scalars acquire large quantum fluctuations during inflation.If sufficiently long-lived, they will give rise to CDM isocurvature perturbations, which are highly constrained by the Planck data. Focusing on…
A variant of hybrid inflation which is applicable in a wide class of supersymmetric grand unified models and reproduces the observed temperature perturbations of cosmic background radiation with natural values of the parameters is…
A pseudo Nambu-Goldstone boson as curvaton avoids the eta-problem of inflation which plagues most curvaton candidates. We point out that a concrete realization of the curvaton mechanism with a pseudo Nambu-Goldstone boson can be found in…
It is known for some time that the cosmological bound on the invisible axion scale can be avoided by an early phase of strong QCD. While most approaches rely on theories where the strong coupling constant is determined through the…
A new scenario of hybrid-like inflation is considered without using hybrid-type potential. Radiation raised continuously by a dissipating inflaton field keeps symmetry restoration in a remote sector, and the false-vacuum energy of the…
Extending the Standard Model with three right-handed neutrinos and a simple QCD axion sector can account for neutrino oscillations, dark matter and baryon asymmetry; at the same time, it solves the strong CP problem, stabilizes the…