Natural Inflation and Quantum Gravity

Abstract

Cosmic Inflation provides an attractive framework for understanding the early universe and the cosmic microwave background. It can readily involve energies close to the scale at which Quantum Gravity effects become important. General considerations of black hole quantum mechanics suggest nontrivial constraints on any effective field theory model of inflation that emerges as a low-energy limit of quantum gravity, in particular the constraint of the Weak Gravity Conjecture. We show that higher-dimensional gauge and gravitational dynamics can elegantly satisfy these constraints and lead to a viable, theoretically-controlled and predictive class of Natural Inflation models.

References added; minor changes and corrections

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• Can Gravitational Instantons Really Constrain Axion Inflation?
• Weak Gravity Conjecture, Multiple Point Principle and the Standard Model Landscape
• An Axion-induced SM/MSSM Higgs Landscape and the Weak Gravity Conjecture
• Oscillating Chiral Tensor Spectrum from Axionic Inflation
• Clockwork Inflation
• Are tiny gauge couplings out of the Swampland?
• Natural Inflation from Polymer Quantization
• Natural Inflation from 5D SUGRA and Low Reheat Temperature