Flavon Inflation

Abstract

We propose an entirely new class of particle physics models of inflation based on the phase transition associated with the spontaneous breaking of family symmetry responsible for the generation of the effective quark and lepton Yukawa couplings. We show that the Higgs fields responsible for the breaking of family symmetry, called flavons, are natural candidates for the inflaton field in new inflation, or the waterfall fields in hybrid inflation. This opens up a rich vein of possibilities for inflation, all linked to the physics of flavour, with interesting cosmological and phenomenological implications. Out of these, we discuss two examples which realise flavon inflation: a model of new inflation based on the discrete non-Abelian family symmetry group A_{4} or Delta_{27}, and a model of hybrid inflation embedded in an existing flavour model with a continuous SU(3) family symmetry. With the inflation scale and family symmetry breaking scale below the Grand Unification Theory (GUT) scale, these classes of models are free of the monopole (and similar) problems which are often associated with the GUT phase transition.

12 pages, 3 figures. References added. Matches published version

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• The Flavor Symmetry
• SU(3) family symmetry and neutrino bi-tri-maximal mixing
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• SUGRA Hybrid Inflation with Shift Symmetry
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• Properties of oscillons in hilltop potentials: energies, shapes, and lifetimes
• Hill crossing during preheating after hilltop inflation
• Matter inflation with A_4 flavour symmetry breaking
• Impact of other scalar fields on oscillons after hilltop inflation
• Kähler-driven Tribrid Inflation
• A Common Source for Scalars: Axiflavon-Higgs Unification
• SUGRA New Inflation with Heisenberg Symmetry
• Neutrino and $Z^{\prime }$ phenomenology in an anomaly-free $\mathbf{U}(1)$ extension: role of higher-dimensional operators
• Non-zero ${\theta }_{13}$ with Unbroken $\mu -\tau$ Symmetry of the Active Neutrino Mass Matrix in the Presence of a Light Sterile Neutrino
• New Inflation in Supersymmetric SU(5) and Flipped SU(5) GUT Models
• Hilltop inflation with preinflation from coupling to matter fields
• Pseudosmooth Tribrid Inflation
• Anomalous Discrete Flavor Symmetry and Domain Wall Problem
• Effects of the imaginary inflaton component in supergravity new inflation
• Supersymmetric Majoron Inflation
• Nonminimal Inflation in Supersymmetric GUTs with $U(1{)}_R\times Z_n$ Symmetry
• New Inflation in Waterfall Region
• Initial conditions of pre-inflation with Hilltop potential in loop quantum cosmology
• Flavored axion-monodromy inflation