Higgs-otic Inflation and Moduli Stabilization

Understand

We study closed-string moduli stabilization in Higgs-otic inflation in Type IIB orientifold backgrounds with fluxes.

• In this setup large-field inflation is driven by the vacuum energy of mobile D7-branes.
• Imaginary selfdual (ISD) three-form fluxes in the background source a $\mu$-term and the necessary monodromy for large field excursions while imaginary anti-selfdual (IASD) three-form fluxes are sourced by non-perturbative contributions to the superpotential necessary for moduli stabilization.
• We analyze K\"ahler moduli stabilization and backreaction on the inflaton potential in detail.