Inflation by Alignment

Abstract

Pseudo-Goldstone bosons (pGBs) can provide technically natural inflatons, as has been comparatively well-explored in the simplest axion examples. Although inflationary success requires trans-Planckian decay constants, f > Mp, several mechanisms have been proposed to obtain this, relying on (mis-)alignments between potential and kinetic energies in multiple-field models. We extend these mechanisms to a broader class of inflationary models, including in particular the exponential potentials that arise for pGB potentials based on noncompact groups (and so which might apply to moduli in an extra-dimensional setting). The resulting potentials provide natural large-field inflationary models and can predict a larger primordial tensor signal than is true for simpler single-field versions of these models. In so doing we provide a unified treatment of several alignment mechanisms, showing how each emerges as a limit of the more general setup.

Several references added in update. 7 pages, 4 figures

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Cited by in corpus (12)

• Transplanckian axions !?
• Gauge-preheating and the end of axion inflation
• A Flux-Scaling Scenario for High-Scale Moduli Stabilization in String Theory
• Robust Inflation from Fibrous Strings
• Trajectories with suppressed tensor-to-scalar ratio in Aligned Natural Inflation
• Systematics of Axion Inflation in Calabi-Yau Hypersurfaces
• Systematics of Aligned Axions
• Axion decay constants away from the lamppost
• Magnon Inflation: Slow Roll with Steep Potentials
• Phases of Inflation
• The two-field regime of natural inflation
• Gauge Field Production and Schwinger Reheating in Runaway Axion Inflation