Runaway Relaxion Monodromy

Understand

We examine the relaxion mechanism in string theory.

• An essential feature is that an axion winds over $N \gg 1$ fundamental periods.
• In string theory realizations via axion monodromy, this winding number corresponds to a physical charge carried by branes or fluxes.
• We show that this monodromy charge backreacts on the compact space, ruining the structure of the relaxion action.