Dante's Waterfall

Understand

We describe a hybrid axion-monodromy inflation model motivated by the Dante's Inferno scenario.

• In Dante's Inferno, a two-field potential features a stable trench along which a linear combination of the two fields slowly rolls, rendering the dynamics essentially identical to that of single-field chaotic inflation.
• A shift symmetry allows for the Lyth bound to be effectively evaded as in other axion-monodromy models.
• In our proposal, the potential is concave downward near the origin and the inflaton trajectory is a gradual downward spiral, ending at a point where the trench becomes unstable.