Bifid Throats for Axion Monodromy Inflation

Retolaza, Ander; Uranga, Ángel M.; Westphal, Alexander

doi:10.48550/arxiv.1504.02103

Cited by 10 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Warped throats are an interesting ingredient in string compactifications, as they provide a mechanism to generate hierarchies in sectors localized in the internal dimensions. For instance, contributions to the vacuum energy proposed to uplift to de Sitter vacua [1], brane inflation [2] or certain axion monodromy inflation models [3,4], particle physics models [5][6][7], etc. used these type of geometries.…”

Section: Introduction and Main Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The first known manifold of this kind is the deformed conifold in [8], but nowadays there are many examples of this kind on the market, see e.g. [4,10,14,16]. The growth of the 3-cycle or complex deformation can be understood from different perspectives; we are interested in the description of such phenomenon in terms of the web diagram, gauge theory and the mirror geometry.…”

Section: Complex Deformationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Orientifolds of warped throats from toric Calabi-Yau singularities

Retolaza

Uranga

2016

J. High Energ. Phys.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract:We study the complex deformations of orientifolds of D3-branes at toric CY singularities, using their description in terms of dimer diagrams. We describe orientifold quotients that have fixed lines or fixed points in the dimer, and characterize the possibilities to deform them in terms of the behaviour of zig-zag paths under the orientifold symmetry. The resulting models are holographic duals to warped throats with orientifold planes. Our systematic construction provides a general class of configurations which includes models recently appeared in the context of de Sitter uplift by nilpotent goldstino or dynamical supersymmetry breaking.

show abstract

Section: Introduction and Main Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Complex Deformationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Orientifolds of warped throats from toric Calabi-Yau singularities

Retolaza

Uranga

2016

J. High Energ. Phys.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…It is interesting that these two questions have already been addressed in the context of axion monodromy inflation models [14][15][16][17][18][19] (see also [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37]), and this motivates the suggestion to UV-complete relaxion models in this framework. In this paper we take several important steps towards fleshing out this proposal, and analyzing the problems of embedding it into a consistent quantum theory of gravity like string theory.…”

Section: Dbi D5-potential For the Axion 1 Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Relaxion monodromy and the Weak Gravity Conjecture

Ibáñez

Montero

Uranga

et al. 2016

J. High Energ. Phys.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract:The recently proposed relaxion models require extremely large trans-Planckian axion excursions as well as a potential explicitly violating the axion shift symmetry. The latter property is however inconsistent with the axion periodicity, which corresponds to a gauged discrete shift symmetry. A way to make things consistent is to use monodromy, i.e. both the axion and the potential parameters transform under the discrete shift symmetry. The structure is better described in terms of a 3-form field C µνρ coupling to the SM Higgs through its field strength F 4 . The 4-form also couples linearly to the relaxion, in the Kaloper-Sorbo fashion. The extremely small relaxion-Higgs coupling arises in a see-saw fashion as g F 4 /f , with f being the axion decay constant. We discuss constraints on this type of constructions from membrane nucleation and the Weak Gravity Conjecture. The latter requires the existence of membranes, whose too fast nucleation could in principle drive the theory out of control, unless the cut-off scale is lowered. This allows to rule out the simplest models with the QCD axion as relaxion candidate on purely theoretical grounds. We also discuss possible avenues to embed this structure into string theory.

show abstract

“…Recent progress towards realizing such warped geometries has been made in [37], where a Z 2 × Z 3 -orbifold of the conifold is used.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Axion monodromy inflation with warped KK-modes

et al. 2016

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We present a particularly simple model of axion monodromy: Our axion is the lowest-lying KK-mode of the RR-2-form-potential C 2 in the standard Klebanov-Strassler throat. One can think of this inflaton candidate as being defined by the integral of C 2 over the S 2 cycle of the throat. It obtains an exponentially small mass from the IR-region in which the S 2 shrinks to zero size both with respect to the Planck scale and the mass scale of local modes of the throat.Crucially, the S 2 cycle has to be shared between two throats, such that the second locus where the S 2 shrinks is also in a warped region. Well-known problems like the potentially dangerous back-reaction of brane/antibrane pairs and explicit supersymmetry breaking are not present in our scenario. However, the inflaton back-reaction starts to deform the geometry strongly once the field excursion approaches the Planck scale. We derive the system of differential equations required to treat this effect quantitatively. Numerical work is required to decide whether back-reaction makes the model suitable for realistic inflation. While we have to leave this crucial issue to future studies, we find it interesting that such a simple and explicit stringy monodromy model allows an originally sub-Planckian axion to go through many periods with full quantitative control before back-reaction becomes strong. Also, the mere existence of our ultra-light throat mode (with double exponentially suppressed mass) is noteworthy.An important question in string cosmology is whether string theory compactifications allow for large-field inflation. On the one hand, many proposals for realizing inflation in string theory exist. At the same time, no-go theorems for large-field inflation have been put forward in various corners of the string theory landscape [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. By studying large-field inflation in string theory one may thus hope to learn about fundamental properties of string theory compactifications.Furthermore, observation may force us to address these questions. For models of singlefield slow-roll inflation, there is a direct link between the tensor-to-scalar ratio r and the nature of inflation. To achieve r 0.01 the inflaton has to traverse a trans-Planckian field range during inflation, thus requiring inflation to be of large-field type [15]. The most recent observational constraint by BICEP2 and the Keck Array on the tensor-to-scalar ratio is r ≤ 0.07 at 95 % confidence [16], which is compatible with large-field inflation. Currently, considerable effort is being expended towards more precise measurements of r.One challenge faced by models of large-field inflation is their sensitivity to an infinite tower of corrections to the inflaton potential. One way of controlling these corrections is to identify the inflaton with an axion-like field (henceforth axion), so that the shift symmetry of the axion protects the potential from dangerous corrections. A promising approach for realizing axion inflation in string theory is axion monodromy in...

show abstract

Bifid Throats for Axion Monodromy Inflation

Cited by 10 publications

References 0 publications

Orientifolds of warped throats from toric Calabi-Yau singularities

Orientifolds of warped throats from toric Calabi-Yau singularities

Relaxion monodromy and the Weak Gravity Conjecture

Axion monodromy inflation with warped KK-modes

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About