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arXiv · 2007.04322

Harmonic Hybrid Inflation

Federico Carta·Nicole Righi·Yvette Welling·Alexander Westphal
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Abstract

We present a mechanism for realizing hybrid inflation using two axion fields with a purely non-perturbatively generated scalar potential. The structure of scalar potential is highly constrained by the discrete shift symmetries of the axions. We show that harmonic hybrid inflation generates observationally viable slow-roll inflation for a wide range of initial conditions. This is possible while accommodating certain UV arguments favoring constraints $f\lesssim M_{\rm P}$ and $\Delta\phi_{60}\lesssim M_{\rm P}$ on the axion periodicity and slow-roll field range, respectively. We discuss controlled $\mathbb{Z}_2$-symmetry breaking of the adjacent axion vacua as a means of avoiding cosmological domain wall problems. Including a minimal form of $\mathbb{Z}_2$-symmetry breaking into the minimally tuned setup leads to a prediction of primordial tensor modes with the tensor-to-scalar ratio in the range $10^{-4}\lesssim r \lesssim 0.01$, directly accessible to upcoming CMB observations. Finally, we outline several avenues towards realizing harmonic hybrid inflation in type IIB string theory.

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Federico Carta, Nicole Righi, Yvette Welling, Alexander Westphal. 2020-07-08. Harmonic Hybrid Inflation. https://doi.org/10.1007/jhep12(2020)161

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