2010

An Ignoble Approach to Large Field Inflation

Kaloper, Nemanja, Lawrence, Albion, Sorbo, Lorenzo

Understand

We study an inflationary model developed by Kaloper and Sorbo, in which the inflaton is an axion with a sub-Planckian decay constant, whose potential is generated by mixing with a topological 4-form field strength.

This gives a 4d construction of "axion monodromy inflation": the axion winds many times over the course of inflation and draws energy from the 4-form.
The classical theory is equivalent to chaotic inflation with a quadratic inflaton potential.
Such models can produce "high scale" inflation driven by energy densities of the order of $(10^{16}\ GeV)^4$, which produces primordial gravitational waves potentially accessible to CMB polarization experiments.

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