Related papers: Inflating with the QCD Axion
Inflationary models, especially those with plateau-type potentials, are consistent with the cosmological data, but inflation itself does not resolve the initial singularity. This singularity is resolved, for example, by the idea of the…
We propose an inflation scenario caused by an inflaton identified with a potential valley which brings about $CP$ violation in the standard model (SM). If singlet scalars have nonminimal couplings with the Ricci scalar in a suitable way,…
The slow-roll approximation to inflation is ultimately justified by the presence of inflationary attractors for the orbits of the solutions of the dynamical equations in phase space. There are many indications that the inflaton field…
We propose a model for cosmic inflation which is based on an effective description of strongly interacting, nonsupersymmetric matter within the framework of dynamical Abelian projection and centerization. The underlying gauge symmetry is…
We compute the primordial scalar, vector and tensor metric perturbations arising from quantum field inflation. Quantum field inflation takes into account the nonperturbative quantum dynamics of the inflaton consistently coupled to the…
We discuss the role of torsion in string theory on inducing pseudoscalar degrees of freedom (axions), which in turn couple to (gravitational) Chern-Simons (CS) anomalous terms. Such interactions can induce inflation, of running vacuum type,…
A model of cosmological inflation is proposed in which field space is a hyperbolic plane. The inflaton never slow-rolls, and instead orbits the bottom of the potential, buoyed by a centrifugal force. Though initial velocities redshift away…
Chromo-natural inflation is a model where non-abelian gauge fields are sustained by the coupling of the axion with the gauge field through the Chern-Simons term. While minimal warm inflation is a model where the axion produces a thermal…
Inflation can occur in the cores of topological defects, where the scalar field is forced to stay near the maximum of its potential. This topological inflation does not require fine-tuning of the initial conditions.
We study the multifield dynamics of axion models nonminimally coupled to gravity. As usual, we consider a canonical $U(1)$ symmetry-breaking model in which the axion is the phase of a complex scalar field. If the complex scalar field has a…
Chain inflation is an alternative to slow-roll inflation in which the inflaton tunnels along a large number of consecutive minima in its potential. In this work we perform the first comprehensive calculation of the gravitational wave…
We present a model of inflation where the inflaton is accommodated as a phantom field which exhibits an initial transient pole behavior and then decays into a quintessence field which is responsible for a radiation era. We must stress that…
We consider chaotic inflation models with a pseudo-scalar field containing the general couplings to the four-form flux. The four-form mixing with the pseudo-scalar field induces a quadratic potential for inflaton while the coexisting…
The quantum chromodynamics (QCD) axion may solve the strong CP problem and explain the dark matter (DM) abundance of our Universe. The axion was originally proposed to arise as the pseudo-Nambu Goldstone boson of global $\mathrm{U}(1)_{\rm…
We examine the hypothesis that inflation is primarily driven by vacuum energy at a scale indicated by gauge coupling unification. Concretely, we consider a class of hybrid inflation models wherein the vacuum energy associated with a grand…
We show that initial conditions for small-field inflation can be determined quantum mechanically by introducing a suitable flattened region in the scalar potential. The inflaton is then driven towards the slow-roll attractor solution…
We propose a novel mechanism to suppress the isocurvature perturbations of the QCD axion. The point is that the QCD interactions become strong at an intermediate or high energy scale in the very early Universe, if the Higgs field has a…
We propose a QCD axion model where the origin of PQ symmetry and suppression of axion isocurvature perturbations are explained by introducing an extra dimension. Each extra quark-antiquark pair lives on branes separately to suppress PQ…
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 reconsider the old problem of the dynamics of spontaneous symmetry breaking using 3d lattice simulations, and develop a theory of tachyonic preheating, which occurs due to the spinodal instability of the scalar field. Tachyonic…