Related papers: Gauge coupling jump and small instantons from a la…
Axion models generically suffer from a severe quality problem when coupled to gravity. In this article we provide a very simple model with a high quality axion. The axion is a pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson of the baryon number symmetry,…
We propose a model for inflation consisting of an axionic scalar field coupled to a set of three non-Abelian gauge fields. Our model's novel requirement is that the gauge fields begin inflation with a rotationally invariant vacuum…
In the Standard Model, partial unification of the non-Abelian running gauge couplings is achieved at the scale $\mu^{SM}_{32} \approx 2.8 \times 10^{16}$ GeV. Elaborating on this fact, we discuss a simple general parametrization for the new…
The original axion natural inflation model predicts a tensor-to-scalar ratio exceeding experimental limits. Conversely, in aligned axion inflation, inflation can proceed along trajectories emerging from near a saddle point of the two-field…
A spectator axion-gauge sector, minimally coupled to the inflaton, with the axion experiencing a momentary stage of fast roll during cosmological inflation, can generate unique signatures in primordial density fluctuations and the…
A constraint on masses of superheavy gauge and Higgs multiplets at the grand unification (GUT) scale is obtained from the gauge coupling unification in the case of high-scale supersymmetry. We found that all of the particles may lie around…
We discuss space-time chaos and scaling properties for classical non-Abelian gauge fields discretized on a spatial lattice. We emphasize that there is a ``no go'' for simulating the original continuum classical gauge fields over a long time…
Emergent modified gravity is a post-Einsteinian gravitational theory where spacetime geometry is not fundamental but rather emerges from the gravitational degrees of freedom in a non-trivial way. The specific relationship between geometry…
Realistic models of particle physics include many scalar fields. These fields generically have nonminimal couplings to the Ricci curvature scalar, either as part of a generalized Einstein theory or as necessary counterterms for…
The apparent unification of gauge couplings in Grand Unified Theories around 10$^{16}$ GeV is one of the strong arguments in favor of Supersymmetric extensions of the Standard Model. In this paper, an analysis of the measurements of the…
We study the non-Gaussianities generated by light axions, or compact scalar fields, during inflation. To correctly calculate their impact on primordial statistics, we will argue that it is necessary to account for the periodicity, or gauge…
We consider a formulation of gauge field theory where the gauge field $A_\alpha$ and the field strength $F_{\alpha\beta}$ are independent variables, as in the Palatini formulation of gravity. For the simplest gauge field action, this is…
We study minimal versions of Higgs inflation in the presence of a massless QCD axion. While the inflationary energy scale of the metric variant is too high to accommodate isocurvature bounds, it was argued that Palatini Higgs inflation…
We derive the consistency relations for a chaotic inflation model with a non-minimal coupling to gravity. For a quadratic potential in the limit of a small non-minimal coupling parameter $\xi$ and for a quartic potential without assuming…
One of the fundamental objectives of contemporary cosmology is to understand the physics of the inflationary universe, owing to its observably verifiable predictions about the very early universe with an energy scale of $\sim 10^{16}$ GeV.…
We analyze the dynamics of inflationary models with a coupling of the inflaton $\phi$ to gauge fields of the form $\phi F \tilde{F}/f$, as in the case of axions. It is known that this leads to an instability, with exponential amplification…
Here we concisely review the nonminimal coupling dynamics of a single scalar field in the context of purely affine gravity and extend the study to multifield dynamics. The coupling is performed via an affine connection and its associated…
Confining gauge theories contain glueballs and mesons with arbitrary spin, and these particles become metastable at large $N$. However, metastable higher spin particles, when coupled to gravity, are in conflict with causality. This tension…
Gauge symmetries emerge from a redundant description of the effective action for light degrees of freedom after the decoupling of heavy modes. This redundant description avoids the use of explicit constraints in configuration space. For…
We study the Abelian projection of SU(2) instantons in the Maximally Abelian gauge. We find that in this gauge an isolated instanton produces a closed monopole loop within its core and the size of this loop increases with the core size. We…