Production and backreaction of massive fermions during axion inflation with non-Abelian gauge fields

Abstract

We study the production and backreaction of massive vector-like fermions in the background of a classical SU(2) gauge field during axion-driven inflation. We demonstrate all ultraviolet divergences due to the interactions with the fermions can be absorbed by renormalization of the axion wavefunction and the gauge coupling. The effects of the fermion-axion interaction vanish in the massless limit as required by symmetry. For very massive fermions, contact interactions are induced between the axion, the gauge field and the gravitational field. In this massive limit, we find the usual axion-gauge field interactions are induced, however, in addition we observe the appearance of axion self-interactions, as well as kinetic braiding of the axion with the Einstein tensor. These new axion derivative interactions present intriguing opportunities for model building and phenomenology.

45 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (17)

• BICEP / Keck XIII: Improved Constraints on Primordial Gravitational Waves using Planck, WMAP, and BICEP/Keck Observations through the 2018 Observing Season
• CMB-S4 Science Case, Reference Design, and Project Plan
• Primordial Gravitational Waves from Axion-Gauge Fields Dynamics
• Higgsed Chromo-Natural Inflation
• Gauge-flation trajectories in Chromo-Natural Inflation
• Ultraviolet Divergences in Cosmological Correlations
• Chern-Simons EM-flation
• Axion assisted Schwinger effect
• SU(2)${}_R$ and its Axion in Cosmology: A common Origin for Inflation, Cold Sterile Neutrinos, and Baryogenesis
• Gravitational waves from spectator Gauge-flation
• Chiral Anomaly in SU(2)${}_R$-Axion Inflation and the New Prediction for Particle Cosmology
• Gravitational Wave from Axion-SU(2) Gauge Fields: Effective Field Theory for Kinetically Driven Inflation
• Universality of linear perturbations in SU($N$)-natural inflation
• Probing the origin of our Universe through cosmic microwave background constraints on gravitational waves
• Axion anomalies
• Semiclassical analysis of axion-assisted and axion-driven pair production
• Reviving chaotic inflation with fermion production: a supergravity model

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Backreaction of axion-SU(2) dynamics during inflation
• Transient phenomena in the axion assisted Schwinger effect
• Fermion (non)reheating with a quartic inflaton potential