Nordita Astrophysics Seminars

Natural Chain Inflation

by Aliki Litsa (Stockholm University)

Europe/Stockholm
https://stockholmuniversity.zoom.us/j/530682073

https://stockholmuniversity.zoom.us/j/530682073

Description

Inflation was suggested in the 1980s to solve various inconsistencies of the Big Bang theory with CMB observations. In Chain Inflation, in particular, the universe tunnels along a series of false vacua of ever-decreasing energy. In my talk, I am going to discuss how we can embed Chain Inflation in high energy fundamental physics. More specifically, I will show an explicit realization of chain inflation, in which the inflaton is identified with an axion in supergravity. The axion enjoys a perturbative shift symmetry which is broken to a discrete remnant by instantons. The model, which we dub ‘natural chain inflation’ satisfies all cosmological constraints and can be embedded into a standard ΛCDM cosmology.