Related papers: Completing Natural Inflation
We study general class of small-field axion inflations which are the mixture of polynomial and sinusoidal functions suggested by the natural and axion monodromy inflations. The axion decay constants leading to the successful axion…
A novel framework is proposed for embedding the natural inflation into the type IIA superstrings compactified on a Calabi-Yau (CY) three-fold. Inflaton is identified with axion of the Universal Hypermultiplet (UH). The other UH scalars…
Natural inflation relies on the existence of an axion decay constant which is super-Planckian. In string theory only sub-Planckian axion decay constants have been found in any controlled regime. However in field theory it is possible to…
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…
The BICEP2 observations, if confirmed, point to a high scale of inflation and large field excursions during the inflationary era. Non-compact string moduli spaces are a suggestive setting for these phenomena. While unlikely to be described…
Based on considerations of quantum gravity, global symmetries which lead to axions as pseudo Nambu-Goldstone bosons after low scale symmetry breaking cannot be exact at the Planck scale. Here, we show that Planck-suppressed terms which…
We continue our investigation of the 4d effective field theory for closed string axions in Type II compactifications with D-branes. The inclusion of St\"uckelberg couplings for the axions requires the presence of chiral fermions at D-brane…
In Chain Inflation the universe tunnels along a series of false vacua of ever-decreasing energy. The main goal of this paper is to embed Chain Inflation in high energy fundamental physics. We begin by illustrating a simple effective…
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…
A new class of gravity-matter model defined with an independent non-Riemannian volume form is studied, in the second order formalism. The action has a global scale invariance symmetry, which can be broken by the equation of motion of the…
In Natural Inflation, the Inflaton is a pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson which acquires a mass by explicit breaking of a global shift symmetry at scale f. In this case, for small field values, the potential is flat and stable under radiative…
Although natural inflation is a theoretically well-motivated model for cosmic inflation, it is in tension with recent Planck cosmic microwave background anisotropy measurements. We present a way to alleviate this tension by considering a…
The relaxion scenario presents an intriguing extension of the standard model in which the particle introduced to solve to the strong CP problem, the axion, also achieves the dynamical relaxation of the Higgs boson mass term. In this work we…
We construct a natural inflation model in supergravity where the inflaton is identified with a modulus field possessing a shift symmetry. The superpotential for the inflaton is generated by meson condensation due to strong dynamics with…
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 a mechanism for the natural inflation with and without modulation in the framework of type IIB string theory on toroidal orientifold or orbifold. We explicitly construct the stabilization potential of complex structure, dilaton…
A framework of inflation is formulated based on symmetry groups and their associated automorphic functions. In this setting the inflaton multiplet takes values in a curved target space constructed from a continuous group $G$ and a discrete…
The aim of this chapter is to explain in clear and pedagogical terms how some particle-physics models and/or mechanisms can naturally lead to inflation and how this can provide testable predictions that can help us find new physics effects.…
The hierarchy of fermion masses in the standard model may arise via the breaking of discrete gauge symmetries. The renormalizable interactions of the flavor-symmetry-breaking potential can have accidental global symmetries that are…
Axions play a central role in inflationary model building and other cosmological applications. This is mainly due to their flat potential, which is protected by a global shift symmetry. However, quantum gravity is known to break global…