Axion Monodromy Inflation, Trapping Mechanisms and the Swampland

Abstract

We study the effects of particle production on the evolution of the inflaton field in an axion monodromy model with the goal of discovering in which situations the resulting dynamics will be consistent with the {\it swampland constraints}. In the presence of a modulated potential the evolving background field (solution of the inflaton homogeneous in space) induces the production of long wavelength inflaton fluctuation modes. However, this either has a negligible effect on the inflaton dynamics (if the field spacing between local minima of the modulated potential is large), or else it traps the inflaton in a local minimum and leads to a graceful exit problem. On the other hand, the production of moduli fields at enhanced symmetry points can lead to a realization of {\it trapped inflation} consistent with the swampland constraints, as long as the coupling between the inflaton and the moduli fields is sufficiently large.

11 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (7)

• On the Geometry of the String Landscape and the Swampland
• Monodromy in the CMB: Gravity Waves and String Inflation
• The Swampland: Introduction and Review
• Reheating in Inflationary Cosmology: Theory and Applications
• Nonperturbative Dynamics Of Reheating After Inflation: A Review
• Trapped Inflation
• Conifold dynamics and axion monodromies

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Primordial Black Holes and Gravitational Waves in Multi-Axion-Chern-Simons Inflation
• Hitchhiker's Guide to the Swampland: The Cosmologist's Handbook to the string-theoretical Swampland Programme
• Dimensional deformation of sine-Gordon breathers into oscillons
• Gravitational waves from resonant amplification of curvature perturbations during inflation