An attractive candidate for the inflaton is an axion slowly rolling down a flat potential protected by a perturbative shift symmetry. Realisations of this idea within large field, natural and monomial inflation have been disfavoured by observations and are difficult to embed in string theory. We show that subleading, but significant non-perturbative corrections can superimpose sharp cliffs and gentle plateaus into the potential, whose overall effect is to enhance the number of e-folds of inflation. Sufficient e-folds are therefore achieved for smaller field ranges compared to the potential without such corrections. Thus, both single-field natural and monomial inflation in UV complete theories like string theory, can be restored into the favour of current observations, with distinctive signatures. Tensor modes result un-observably small, but there is a large negative running of the spectral index. Remarkably, natural inflation can be achieved with a single field whose axion decay constant is sub-Planckian.
We perform a detailed analytical and numerical analysis of the multi-field evolution of Fibre Inflation and show that, regardless of the microscopic realisation of the model, the mass-squared of one of the two ultra-light axions becomes always negative during inflation. This implies that the corresponding isocurvature perturbations experience a potential geometrical destabilisation which seems to bring the system away from the perturbative regime. Therefore we conclude that a full understanding of the inflationary evolution of Fibre Inflation can be achieved only via a non-perturbative analysi…
Axion inflation entails a coupling of the inflaton field to gauge fields through the Chern-Simons term. This results in a strong gauge field production during inflation, which backreacts on the inflaton equation of motion. Here we show that this strongly non-linear system generically experiences a resonant enhancement of the gauge field production, resulting in oscillatory features in the inflaton velocity as well as in the gauge field spectrum. The gauge fields source a strongly enhanced scalar power spectrum at small scales, exceeding previous estimates. For appropriate parameter choices, th…
In the axion monodromy inflation, the inflation is driven by the axion with super-Planckian field values in a monomial potential with superimposed sinusoidal modulations. The coupling of the axion to massless gauge fields can induce copious particle production during inflation, resulting in large non-Gaussian curvature perturbation that leads to the formation of primordial black holes. In this paper, we explore the parameter space in the axion monodromy inflation model that favors the formation of primordial black holes with masses ranging from $10^8$ grams to $20$ solar masses. We also study …
Motivated by the recently proposed Trans-Planckian Censorship Conjecture (TCC), we propose a gauged $B-L$ model of inflection-point inflation with axion dark matter. The Hubble scale during inflation ($H_{\rm inf}$) satisfies the TCC bound of $H_{\rm inf} \lesssim 1$ GeV, the axion dark matter scenario is free from the axion domain wall and isocurvature problems, and the axion decay constant can be larger than $10^{12}$ GeV. The seesaw mechanism is automatically incorporated in the model and the observed baryon asymmetry of the universe can be reproduced via resonant leptogenesis.
$SU(2)$ gauge fields can generate large gravitational waves during inflation, if they are coupled to an axion which can be either the inflaton or a spectator field. The shape of the produced tensor power spectrum $\mathcal{P}_h$ depends on the form of the axion potential. We derive analytic expressions and provide general templates for $\mathcal{P}_h$ for various types of the spectator axion potential. Furthermore, we explore the detectability of the oscillatory feature, which is present in $\mathcal{P}_h$ in the case of an axion monodromy model, by possible future CMB B-mode polarization obse…
Nordita（诺尔迪塔）；KTH Royal Institute of Technology（瑞典皇家理工学院）；Stockholm University（斯德哥尔摩大学）；The Oskar Klein Centre（奥斯卡·克莱因中心）；Texas Center for Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics（德州宇宙学与天体粒子物理中心）；Weinberg Institute for Theoretical Physics（温伯格理论物理研究所）；Department of Physics, The University of Texas at Austin（德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校物理系）；Department of Physics, Harvard University（哈佛大学物理系）；McWilliams Center for Cosmology & Department of Physics, Carnegie Mellon University（卡内基梅隆大学麦克威廉斯宇宙学中心及物理系）；School of Natural Sciences and Medicine, Ilia State University（伊利亚州立大学自然科学与医学院）
The axion is a well-motivated candidate for the inflaton, as the radiative corrections that spoil many single-field models are avoided by virtue of its shift symmetry. However, axions generically couple to gauge sectors. As the axion slow-rolls during inflation, this coupling can cause the production of a non-diluting thermal bath, a situation known as "warm inflation." This thermal bath can dramatically alter inflationary dynamics and observable predictions. In this paper, we demonstrate that a thermal bath can form for a wide variety of initial conditions. Furthermore, we find that axion inf…
The key to the phenomenological success of inflation models with axion and SU(2) gauge fields is the isotropic background of the SU(2) field. Previous studies showed that this isotropic background is an attractor solution during inflation starting from anisotropic (Bianchi Type I) spacetime; however, not all possible initial anisotropic parameter space was explored. In this paper, we explore more generic initial conditions without assuming the initial slow-roll dynamics. We find some initial anisotropic parameter space which does not lead to the isotropic background, but to violation of slow-r…
We propose a natural inflation model driven by an imaginary or axionic component of a Kähler modulus in string-inspired supergravity. The shift symmetry of the axion is gauged under an anomalous $U(1)_X$ symmetry, which leads to a modulus-dependent Fayet-Iliopoulos (FI) term. The matter fields are stabilized by F-terms, and the real component of the modulus is stabilized by the $U(1)_X$ D-term, while its axion remains light. Therefore, the masses of real and imaginary components of the modulus are separated at different scales. The scalar potential for natural inflation is realized by the supe…
Many cosmological models rely on large couplings of axions to gauge fields. Examples include theories of magnetogenesis, inflation on a steep potential, chiral gravitational waves, and chromonatural inflation. Such theories require a mismatch between the axion field range and the mass scale appearing in the $a F \widetilde{F}$ coupling. This mismatch suggests an underlying monodromy, with the axion winding around its fundamental period a large number of times. We investigate the extent to which this integer can be explained as a product of smaller integers in a UV completion: in the parlance o…
We study the future prospects of the 21cm forest observations on the axion-like dark matter when the spontaneous breaking of the global Peccei-Quinn (PQ) symmetry occurs after the inflation. The large isocurvature perturbations of order unity sourced from axion-like particles can result in the enhancement of minihalo formation, and the subsequent hierarchical structure formation can affect the minihalo abundance whose masses can exceed ${\cal O}(10^4) M_{\odot}$ relevant for the 21cm forest observations. We show that the 21cm forest observations are capable of probing the axion-like particle m…
In this work we investigate the quantitative effects of the misalignment kinetic axion on $R^2$ inflation. Due to the fact that the kinetic axion possesses a large kinetic energy which dominates its potential energy, during inflation its energy density redshifts as stiff matter fluid and evolves in a constant-roll way, making the second slow-roll index to be non-trivial. At the equations of motion level, the $R^2$ term dominates the evolution, thus the next possible effect of the axion could be found at the cosmological perturbations level, via the second slow-roll index which is non-trivial. …
A kinetic mixing between the axion and the inflaton allows for a production of axion dark matter even if the inflationary Hubble scale is smaller than the zero-temperature axion mass. We analyze the axion dynamics in this recently discovered "inflaxion" framework, and present a new cosmological scenario where the axion drifts away from its vacuum during the reheating epoch, giving rise to the observed dark matter abundance. We discuss the implications for both the QCD axion and axion-like particles.
We continue our investigation of the 4d effective field theory for closed string axions in Type II compactifications with D-branes. The inclusion of Stückelberg couplings for the axions requires the presence of chiral fermions at D-brane intersections, whose interactions at strong non-Abelian gauge coupling induce mass terms for the axions and scalar chiral condensate excitations, dubbed infladrons. The set-up allows for a realization of natural-like inflation with a closed string axion as inflaton and a flattened scalar potential due to the back-reaction of the more massive infladrons. We fur…
Warm inflation has been noted previously as a possible way to implement inflationary models compatible with the dS swampland bounds. But often in these discussions the heat bath dynamics is kept largely unspecified. We point out that the recently introduced Minimal Warm Inflation of arXiv:1910.07525, where an axionic coupling of the inflaton leads to an explicit model for the thermal bath, yields models of inflation that can easily fit cosmological observations while satisfying de Sitter swampland bounds, as well as the swampland distance bound and trans-Planckian censorship.
The abundance of the QCD axion is known to be suppressed if the Hubble parameter during inflation, $H_{\rm inf}$, is lower than the QCD scale, and if the inflation lasts sufficiently long. We show that the tight upper bound on the inflation scale can be significantly relaxed if the eternal old inflation is driven by the standard-model Higgs field trapped in a false vacuum at large field values. Specifically, $H_{\rm inf}$ can be larger than $100\,$GeV if the false vacuum is located above the intermediate scale. We also discuss the slow-roll inflation after the tunneling from the false vacuum t…
William I. Fine Theoretical Physics Institute, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Minnesota（明尼苏达大学物理与天文学院威廉·I·芬理论物理研究所）；School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Minnesota（明尼苏达大学物理与天文学院）
Axions are among the best motivated dark matter candidates. Their production in the early Universe by the vacuum misalignment mechanism gives rise to isocurvature perturbations, which are constrained by cosmic microwave background measurements. In this paper, we compute the axion isocurvature power spectrum using spectral expansion in the stochastic Starobinsky-Yokoyama formalism, which captures non-linear effects in the axion dynamics. In contrast to most of the existing literature, we focus on high inflationary Hubble rates of order $10^{13}~{\rm GeV}$, and demonstrate that there is a signif…
We study the scalar-tensor-tensor non-Gaussian signal in an inflationary model comprising also an axion coupled with SU(2) gauge fields. In this set-up, metric fluctuations are sourced by the gauge fields already at the linear level providing an enhanced chiral gravitational waves spectrum. The same mechanism is at work in generating an amplitude for the three-point function that is parametrically larger than in standard single-field inflation.
