Joint cosmology seminar at Tufts online:

Tuesday, February 23, 2021, 2:30 pm
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Tufts University

Sometimes 2 are more than 1 + 1 -- double monodromy inflation

Alexander Westphal
DESY

Abstract:

Vanilla slow-roll inflation contains a 'desert' assumption reminiscent of the GUT paradigm. We argue that giving up on in particular high-scale inflation occurring as a single 60-efold epoch may render it more natural and easier to UV complete. At the same time, such double monodromy inflation will quasi automatically generate additional gravitational wave signals e.g. at LISA. We will also outline possible string theory realizations of the required 2-field axion monodromy setup.