Related papers: Completing Natural Inflation
In the so-called natural inflation, an axion-like inflaton is assumed to have a cosine-type periodic potential. This is not the case in a very simple model in which the axion-like inflaton is coupled to an SU(N) (or other) pure Yang-Mills,…
We discuss inflation models within supersymmetry and supergravity frameworks with a landscape of chiral superfields and one $U(1)$ shift symmetry which is broken by non-perturbative symmetry breaking terms in the superpotential. We label…
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…
We propose a landscape of many axions, where the axion potential receives various contributions from shift symmetry breaking effects. We show that the existence of the axion with a super-Planckian decay constant is very common in the axion…
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…
In models of natural inflation, the inflaton is an axion-like particle. Unfortunately, axion potentials in UV-complete theories appear to be too steep to drive inflation. We show that, even for a steep potential, natural inflation can occur…
We propose a new class of natural inflation models based on a hidden scale invariance. In a very generic Wilsonian effective field theory with an arbitrary number of scalar fields, which exhibits scale invariance via the dilaton, the…
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…
Multiple axions form a landscape in the presence of various shift symmetry breaking terms. Eternal inflation populates the axion landscape, continuously creating new universes by bubble nucleation. Slow-roll inflation takes place after the…
We derive the requirements that a generic axion-like field has to satisfy in order to play the role of the inflaton field in the warm inflation scenario. Compared to the parameter space in ordinary natural inflation models, we find that the…
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…
In the ``natural inflation'' model, the inflaton potential is periodic. We show that Planck scale physics may induce corrections to the inflaton potential, which is also periodic with a greater frequency. Such high frequency corrections…
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…
A pseudo Nambu-Goldstone boson (such as an axion-like particle) is a theoretically well-motivated inflaton as it features a naturally flat potential (natural inflation). This is because Goldstone's theorem protects its potential from…
Slow-roll inflation requires the inflaton field to have an exceptionally flat potential, which combined with measurements of the scale of inflation demands some degree of fine-tuning. Alternatively, the flatness of the potential could be…
We study how to obtain a sufficiently flat inflaton potential that is natural from the particle physics point of view. Supersymmetry, which is broken during inflation, cannot protect the potential against non-renormalizable operators…
The inflationary paradigm has enjoyed phenomenological success, however, a compelling particle physics realization is still lacking. The key obstruction is that the requirement of a suitably flat scalar potential is sensitive to…
In Aligned Natural Inflation, an alignment between different potential terms produces an inflaton excursion greater than the axion scales in the potential. We show that, starting from a general potential of two axions with two aligned…
We construct a model of inflation based on a low-energy effective theory of spontaneously broken global scale invariance. This provides a shift symmetry that protects the inflaton potential from quantum corrections. Since the underlying…
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…